PM Briceño Unveils Bold Overhaul of NHI System

The Briceño administration pressed ahead with major reforms on Friday, first by tabling legislation to cement free movement among four CARICOM nations, and then by rolling out a sweeping overhaul of Belize’s healthcare system. The Free Movement Bill formalizes the agreement that will allow citizens of Belize, Barbados, Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to live and work across borders beginning in 2025, offering clarity on rights and responsibilities under the new regime. Moments later, Prime Minister John Briceño introduced the National Health Insurance Authority Bill, calling it the most significant transformation of Belize’s healthcare structure in a generation. The proposed authority aims to enforce price transparency, regulate drug costs and channel more funding into community health centers, all part of a push to deliver more affordable, accountable care to tens of thousands of Belizeans.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“Something that started under Said Musa administration in his first government and today we introduced the bill to be able to enact it as an authority to remove it from Social Security and to make the announcement that on the twelfth of this month we are going to be signing contracts for all the clinics that are going to be offering NHI services to approximately eighty thousand people. That is historic. It is important. Minister Henry Charles just showed me a text message saying one of his constituency members saying thanks minister I went to NHI and it cost me five dollars and there are so many of those things. When Dr. Daisy Mendez pointed out to us in Cabinet that a person that is hypertensive and diabetic it cost them six hundred a month. But under NHI it is under fifty dollars, it is far less than doing it on your own. We believe firmly it is cheaper to keep somebody healthy that to cure them.”

 

And as the Prime Minister put it, this new NHI Authority is all about giving Belizeans cheaper, clearer, and more reliable healthcare by finally moving the system out from under Social Security and into a dedicated agency built to serve nearly eighty thousand people.