Letter
How do you measure wealth?
Dear Sir:
We are often told that Cayman is one ofthe wealthiest countries in the world, but how do we measure this?I would submit that there is more to life than "he who dieswith the most money and things wins".
Cayman has over the years become a verymaterialistic society, with an "every man for himself"mentality. We do little to reduce the gap between the "haves"and the "have nots", as this costs money and that moneyhas to ultimately come from the pockets of the "haves",who after all wish to keep their money for themselves.
One example of this is the Health InsuranceLaw of 1997. Although it must be acknowledged that any provisionfor Health Insurance is a step forward from no provision at all,this law was written with a focus on the needs and wishes of theinsurance companies and the "haves", with very littleconsideration for the "have nots".
To spell it out, every "first world"country has a system whereby pensioners, the "uninsurable","partly insurable" and often children too are coveredby "the system". How is this achieved? Basically everybodypays a little extra one way or another for their healthcare tomake sure that these people can receive coverage.
Do we have this in Cayman? No, we have asystem where the healthy and employed can get insurance, but notthe infirm or elderly. After all, those people are more expensiveto insure and that would put the premiums up for everybody andreduce the profits of the insurance companies.
To illustrate let's give an example. Let'ssay you are in your late '50s working in the private sector andapproaching retirement, looking forward to living off your savingsand (perhaps) pension. Ah, but as soon as you quit work and/orare over a certain age you then become "uninsurable".What then is to become of you if you get seriously ill? Well,if you have no insurance Government will front the cost of yourbills for you, but then they will do everything in their powerto reclaim those funds from you, so say goodbye to your hard earnedsavings, pension funds and maybe even your house. Is this anyway for Cayman to treat our fathers and mothers after a lifetimeof hard work?
Another example is that of the "partiallyinsurable". Once you have had any remotely serious illness,if you ever change jobs the insurance company for your new employerwill immediately latch onto this and prevent you from being insuredfor any recurrence of that illness. Unlike the restrictions onchanging jobs related to work permits, these "health insurancehandcuffs" apply to Caymanians and expats alike. One wondershow many people have had to turn down the opportunity to changejobs in the few years the law has been in effect?
I am not one to recommend a full-scale welfarestate, but nothing is going to change here without Governmentintervention and that will only happen if it is the will of thepeople. Surely we can at least consider having the state providefree medical care for all Caymanians over the age of 65 (not justretired Government employees) and on requiring insurance companiesto insure everybody, not just those they think they can make moneyoff? Yes, the cost would have to come from higher premiums onthe rest of us, but would making this move not at least be onesmall step back from the head long rush for material wealth?
I am aware that my timing may not be thebest, what with budgetary constraints on Government, but one ofthe contentious items in the Government finances is the massiveamount of debt for medical expense government still has to reclaimfrom its own people. Unless something is changed in "thesystem", the reality is that this "accounts receivable"will never be fully repaid, as no sooner will one person pay oftheir debt than another will get sick and Government will haveto fund their treatment. Come on people, talk to your MLAs, let'smake a change!
Tom McCallum