Bahama Pundit

Regulatory Issues Need to be Addressed as Interest in Medical Tourism Surges

by Larry Smith

In a soon-to-be published book (Is it Really Better in the Bahamas...for Bahamians?), local eye surgeon Dr John Rodgers argues strongly for the development of medical tourism in the Bahamas.

""If the Bahamian GDP could receive the $2 billion that Cuba receives annually from medical tourism, not only would our national debt be reduced, but Bahamians would have true ownership of this segment of the economy," he writes.

Rodgers complains about the inertia and obstructionism of both the government and the Medical Association, but this mindset seems to be changing. The pent up investment demand of wealthy physicians is fueling a range of medical tourism initiatives, and more are lying just under the radar.

Medical tourism is said to be a multi-billion-dollar growth industry that hospitals, doctors and tourism marketers around the world are eager to tap into, but there are few reliable statistics. According to one estimate, as many as half a million Americans travelled to other countries for treatment in 2008 - and rising US healthcare costs are expected to grow this market over the next several years.

When Good Men Talk Foolishness

by Simon

We dipped to a low point in our public discourse a few weeks ago.  It came in the weekly commentary by Philip Galanis in the Nassau Guardian entitled, When Good Men Do Nothing.  Mr. Galanis wrote on various matters relative to whether Cheryl Grant-Bethel should have been appointed as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Hyperbole and some overblown rhetoric are expected from partisans.   Still, there are boundaries of decorum and civil accord.  When a commentator compares an opponent to Hitler and the Nazis, those bounds have been trashed. 

Mr. Galanis cannot lamely excuse himself that he was making a larger point, that this was just a bad analogy.  That excuse has been attempted as many times as it has spectacularly failed.  Mr. Galanis did not simply go too far.  He broke one of the cardinal rules of public discourse.

Saunders Beach Park

by Simon

The marauding band of casuarinas that invaded and colonized Saunders Beach many years ago are now defeated after years of occupation of one of New Providence’s more accessible beaches.  The casuarinas pillaged considerable sand, eroding this precious treasure for decades.

Happily, this invasive species is being replaced by broad-leafed sea grape trees, providing form and function, rendering aesthetic value and shade.  There are other fruits they will render in time, including memories. 

Many of us grew up going on Sunday adventures and reconnaissance exercises out west searching for coco plums to savour or out east to raid tamarind trees.  Now, generations of children growing into adulthood, will remember Saunders Beach for sea grapes, as if the sea itself was the orchard for this fruit bearing its name.

The Threat from The Bahamas

by Simon

“One day Henny Penny was scratching in the farmyard looking for something good to eat when, suddenly, something hit her on the head.  ‘My goodness me!’ she said. ‘The sky must be falling down.  I must go and tell the king’.”

Henny Penny’s frenzied cry, “The sky is falling”, has become the battle cry of some fretting that the apparent normalizing of relations between the United States and Cuba will be a disaster for our tourism industry.

There’s a reason that this reoccurring folktale in several cultures is further titled in its English version, Chicken Little.    Henny and Chicken are so fearful of the threat from Cuba that they’re overlooking compelling facts and offering silly judgements.  They also fail to realize “the threat” The Bahamas poses to other Caribbean destinations.

The Past, Present & Future of Bahamian Fisheries

by Larry Smith

The sea is the world's most important food source, but many don't realise that most fish stocks today are over-exploited and in danger of collapsing - as the northern cod fishery did in 1992.

Scientists say overfishing is the biggest single threat to the oceans. In fact, fish don't stand a chance - especially the big ones, which these days almost never get away. Ninety per cent of these top predators have disappeared since the 1950s.

And although industrial fishing (such as longlining, drift netting, purse seine netting, and hydraulic dredging) isn't permitted in Bahamian waters, we too are faced with declining catches and potential ecological disaster.

For example, targeting spawning aggregations caused grouper stocks to plummet and led to a winter closed season. Conch is more and more difficult to find (although half a million pounds were exported last year). And crawfish and scale fish are being heavily depleted by poachers.

Facts and Fiction About Diversification

by Simon

At a recent service marking his demission from office, the head of a prominent denomination offered the heated view that the Bahamian economy desperately needs to be diversified. 

He proclaimed that he had advised successive governments of this need, but that his advice went unheeded.   Unfortunately, the religious head seems as expert in economics as Donald Trump may be in theology.

His is the latest example of a public figure who should know better than repeating the wearying and inaccurate conventional wisdom regarding the actual nature and level of diversification of the Bahamas economy. 

This same ignorance continues to bubble to the surface by those running around panicking like the fabled Henny Penny that the sky is falling in terms of the supposed dire threat of Cuba to the Bahamian tourism industry.