Employers who break the law in failing to cover their staff’s health insurance will soon be named by the Bermuda Health Council.

Every month, hundreds of people are found to have no health insurance — and the council has only been able to reinstate half of policies on average.

Such cases can ultimately end up before the courts, but the process can be a lengthy one. Both sides of Parliament supported the Health Insurance Amendment Bill 2015, aimed at finding quicker means of prompting business owners to keep their staff covered.

“In difficult economic times, employers may be tempted to cut corners, but it is critical that employees are protected to ensure that they have current health insurance,” said Jeanne Atherden, the Minister of Health, quoting from a 2014 Throne Speech pledge. “This Bill delivers on that promise.”

Most employers failed to notify staff when insurance lapsed, Ms Atherden said, meaning workers only discovered they were not covered when they sought medical attention.

It is an offence not to notify employees in writing.

“These offences can be prosecuted, but this is a costly and time-consuming process which does not achieve the aim of the principal Act, which is to ensure that employees are insured,” she said.

“This does not mean an end to any remedy by the criminal law, but the publication proposed by this Bill will alert employees sooner, where there is an issue, and very likely cause delinquent employers to prioritise their responsibility.”

She said that in the last fiscal year, between 234 and 631 employees had been discovered monthly to be without active health insurance.

At present, the Health Council follows up with all employers with inactive policies, but Ms Atherden said this reduced inactive policies by “50 per cent on average”.

Speaking for the Progressive Labour Party, MP and former Health Minister Zane DeSilva gave Opposition approval.

“This is something I was certainly in support of, prior to the election of 2012,” he said, saying the Bill would “name and shame those who need to be named and shamed”.

David Burt, the Shadow Finance Minister, said members of his own constituency had been affected by the problem, and he had seen no results from reporting it to both the Health Council and the Police. PLP MP Walton Brown approved “naming and shaming those who wilfully violate the law”.

He also called for similar measures for employers who flouted work permit policy — saying the Government in previous sessions had seemed “pained” when it came to identifying them.

Speaking in the wake of November’s Throne Speech, Bermuda Health Council’s chief executive, Jennifer Attride-Stirling, told this newspaper that delinquent employers would be named online.

However, she told The Royal Gazette that regulators were keen to avoid the term “name and shame”, calling the move merely preventive, as well as a means to inform staff.

• For the full ministerial statement, see the PDF under “Related Media”.