Today’s news that medical practitioners will soon stop accepting health insurance cards of civil servants unless they receive payment for overdue bills must be disconcerting for the public sector employees involved and their families. It seems government – already for years – didn’t transfer enough means to the ORV fund for coverage of its personnel managed by Social and Health Insurance SZV.
Perhaps for this reason SZV reportedly put the ORV cards “on hold” in March 2018, but business continued as usual. However, it now appears many of the medical professionals have not been paid for six months.
St. Maarten Consumers Coalition sounded the alarm over a week ago, after receiving indications of such problems. It was explained at the time by Minister of Public Health, Social Development and Labour Emil Lee and SZV’s management that there had indeed been delays, but payments were taking place and a solution was being worked on.
The same consumer group reported in Friday’s paper that they had asked the Health Care Providers Platform to place a lien on government funds rather than start refusing the cards. It did not follow that advice due to the duration of a possible related court procedure, difficulty collecting in case of a win and doubt over the result because SZV had warned the cards were no longer valid, even though it kept honouring them afterwards.
Of course, this not the first time such “cash only” threats are made under similar circumstances. Consumers Coalition members Claire Elshot and Raymond Jessurun referred to issues with the FZOG and BZV cards not too long ago.
It all comes down to public administrators backed by high-ranking officials failing to meet obligations also regarding social and pension premiums mostly in the past, as elected representatives stood by and watched. The consequence is huge debts to SZV and the General Pension Fund APS of which the Committee for Financial Supervision (CFT) is well aware and that are being addressed in the preparation of annual budgets.
Ministers Perry Geerlings of Finance and Lee were given two weeks to fulfil certain commitments made in their encounter on this matter with the platform last Tuesday. The clock is ticking.
