St. Maarten should learn from
hospital, SVB saga says Maria
PHILIPSBURG--The long drawn out saga between St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) and Social Insurance Bank (SVB) over a new budget agreement should be a lesson for St. Maarten on how not to do things during Country St. Maarten.
This statement was made by Health Commissioner Maria Buncamper-Molanus on Wednesday, in reaction to SMMC’s court victory against SVB on Tuesday.
The Commissioner said the two parties had been back and forth for a new budget agreement for quite a long time. “We need to take this experience and ensure that we don’t repeat it in Country St. Maarten,” she said.
The Commissioner said while SVB was designed to provide social tariffs to 20 per cent of the population who fell in the low income bracket; constant legislation changes turned it into an insurance service provider for 80 per cent of the population.
After years of battling with SVB over budget agreement issues for 2004 and 2005, SMMC won a court battle against Health Minister Omayra Leeflang on Tuesday. The Court ruled that Leeflang will have to set a budget for SMMC for the years 2004 and 2005. With this ruling, SMMC won the LAR administrative court case it had launched in April 2007 against a ministerial decree of March 9, 2007. In that decree, the minister had rejected the hospital’s request to set budgets for medical care for the years 2004 and 2005.
Budget amounts for 2004 and 2005 have been a point of contention for quite some time. While SVB and former health ministers had contended that the books were closed for these two years, the hospital had maintained its position that they were not.
Based on calculations, SMMC contended that SVB owed it NAf. 15.9 million for treating SVB clients for the years 2004 and 2005. SVB has already paid NAf. 11.4 million of this amount and still owes SMMC NAf. 4.6 million – the amount SMMC was pursuing in court.
On Wednesday, Buncamper-Molanus also spoke about the general insurance system currently being designed for Country St. Maarten, noting that once this system is put in place, all the SVB insured persons will fall under the general system. She said too that the general insurance system will be designed in such a way that all persons on the island will be covered.
