fp Turks and Caicos

The National Insurance Board has agreed to pay $6.15 million to the Turks and Caicos Islands government for unpaid health care costs since 1992, board Chairwoman Lillian Misick said in an Aug. 3 statement.

Separate discussions are being held relating to payment of another approximately $3 million in interest.

“The board sought and was given expert advice from four actuaries and relied on that expert advice in coming to their decision,” Misick said.
NIB was supposed to be paying government for health care treatment of insured people for work related injuries, disabilities and deaths since 1992, but former elected governments never submitted claims.

Despite the lack of documented requests, the NIB paid elected government $50,000 a year until the interim administration began submitting bills in 2009. Then in October, His Excellency the Gov. Ric Todd announced that based on actuarial advice the NIB should pay government $10 million to cover old undocumented costs.

Todd said the money would go to the financially ailing National Health Insurance Program, which has been covering costs since it began in 2009. The money would come from a $20 million NIB fund set aside for medical coverage, not from the board’s funds that pay pensions.

In February the board asked the courts to stop the payment, with outgoing board Chairman Ervine Quelch calling it “a rape of the National Insurance Fund.”

However, in March the governor appointed Misick — former chairwoman of the Consultative Forum — as chairwoman of NIB when Quelch’s five-year term ended, and she vowed to bring the dispute to “a sensible conclusion.”

In an attempt to avoid huge legal bills in a court battle, both sides agreed to a 90-day “period of reflection,” the NIB statement said.

“Some NIB Board members had previously opposed the move due to the lack of records of payments made by government,” the statement said. “However, actuarial advice from the NIB, National Health Insurance Board and a further independent peer review which confirmed the conclusion that the monies were due to government.”

The governor said he was pleased that the “highly politicized” dispute has been resolved.

“There was never any question of the people of these islands losing out,” Todd said. “Their government had honoured the provision of employment injury medical costs, and quite rightly wished to recover this cash from the organisation charged with collecting revenues for this purpose – the NIB.”