The Department of Statistics yesterday released a study on wealth distribution and inequality, which has revealed significant disparities in private medical insurance among the country’s wealthiest and poorest demographics. The department’s 2013 Household Expenditure Survey stated that access to private medical insurance in The Bahamas was “very unequally distributed,” with 60.3 percent of the individuals of the country’s wealthiest quintile, or 20 percent, having private medical insurance, while only 5.6 percent of people in the poorest quintile had similar insurance. Speaking with Guardian Business, President of Doctors Hospital Health System Barry Rassin suggested that the figures are closely linked to employment figures. “The reality is that people who are working are the ones who have health insurance. If you’re not working for a company that provides health insurance, you’ll most likely not have health insurance,” said Rassin, adding that earlier studies done by the hospital estimated that 90,000 of the population is covered by health insurance. Rassin further suggested that the numbers could become even more imbalanced once value-added tax (VAT) is applied to private medical services and health insurance beginning January 1, 2015. “When January 1 comes and the cost of living goes up, then more employers may drop their health insurance or reduce their number of employees. When that happens, then the market will go down and fewer people will have health insurance,” stated Rassin. The study showed that New Providence residents had the highest level of prescription drug expenditures, while Grand Bahama had the largest expenditure for outpatient visits. The report also unsurprisingly indicated that private healthcare providers were preferred to public health options for the households that could afford medical expenditures. Leopoldo Tornarolli, a consultant for the Department or Statistics and author of the report’s executive summary, was surprised that severe hike in the country’s unemployment rate did not create a corresponding increase in poverty levels. The latest Labour Force Survey, published in July, indicated that the country’s unemployment rate had dropped from 15.4 percent in November 2013 to 14.3 percent in May 2014. Although the national poverty rate for The Bahamas rose from 9.3 percent in 2001 to 12.5 percent in 2013, the country’s level of inequality decreased slightly during the same period. The Gini Coefficient, a widely used indicator of economic inequality that rates countries from 0 (complete equality) to 100 (complete inequality), showed that national inequality fell from 43.5 in 2001 to 41.4 in 2013.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 18:40:41 +0000
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