Shadow Health Minister Louise Jackson insists deadlines were in place to enroll in Government's new health insurance plan for seniors.

And she criticised the Health Ministry for using the tough economy as an excuse for limiting enrollment in Futurecare to only those roughly 3,000 seniors who were already enrolled in HIP.

Taking issue with Health Minister Nelson Bascome's claim in Thursday's Royal Gazette that there has never been a deadline for persons to sign up for FutureCare, Mrs. Jackon said: "There was a deadline of January 1, 2009!

"Persons 65 and over who were not enrolled in HIP by that date would not be eligible for FutureCare. That is official government policy."

She further claimed: "And this week, a person who will turn 65 this year and therefore be eligible for FutureCare was turned away from the office for Hospital Insurance Plan. The person, who went to the office on Tuesday, the 24th, to register eligibility for FutureCare was told they were a day late. This cut-off date was later confirmed to me by the National Office for Seniors.

"As far as I can see, the government put deadlines in place for people. My main concern is that these deadlines were under-promoted because the government wants to minimise the number of people covered by FutureCare even if they are eligible to avoid the high costs associated with the programme.

Mrs. Jackson added that she had checked with the two local newspapers and they reported no print ads purchased for the January 1 cut-off for membership in HIP and, therefore, eligibility for the first phase of FutureCare.

"There were no ads alerting the public to the March 23 cut-off for seniors turning 65 this year who also want to be eligible for the first phase of FutureCare," she said.

"So, deadlines? Yes. Lack of promotion of deadlines? Yes. Fewer seniors registered for FutureCare this year? You bet!"

However, Health Permanent Secretary Warren Jones again stated Mrs. Jackson was not correct.

"There has never been a deadline for persons to enroll in FutureCare," he insisted. "As has been noted in my and the Minister's previous responses in January we were not even in a position to speak about FutureCare so how could we have set up an enrollment period for it?

"We certainly stopped taking applications for HIP from seniors. That is not new news since we also stated that the programme will only accept those who are presently on the HIP programme."

Mrs. Jackson also said she took issue with the Government's statement that it had to scale back the number of seniors covered by FutureCare because of "the suddenness of the economic downturn".

"This government had plenty of time to prepare for the economic downturn. My colleague Bob Richards, the Shadow Finance Minister, was emphatic in warning (of a downturn) throughout 2008.

"The reason Mr. Richards spent so much time last year warning the government to prepare for the downturn was to avoid the kind of scrambling and backtracking that has characterised the work on FutureCare, which the Permanent Secretary of Health spoke of this week."