Last week, Health Minister Nelson Bascome complained in the Bermuda Sun that the media emphasises the negative and ignores the positive, especially when it comes to Government.

This is a complaint that has been around as long as politicians and journalists have.

Still, Mr. Bascome's main complaint was that Government's FutureCare programme, which came into operation on April 1, had not received the credit it deserved.

Perhaps Mr. Bascome should be careful not to seek too much credit, since it has now been revealed that his Ministry deliberately, and without public notice, prevented senior citizens from joining the scheme, not through any fault of their own, but because of his Government's own ineptitude.

To see why this is so, you have to go back to the beginning of FutureCare.

The programme was announced during the December, 2007 General Election campaign when the Progressive Labour Party promised a programme that would both extend benefits available under the Health Insurance Programme (HIP) and would be affordable for all senior citizens.

That was a laudable goal, since the lack of affordable and comprehensive health insurance for seniors has long been a scandal.

But the difficulty with the PLP's promise was that nothing was done to calculate its cost. Even 15 months ago, when Bermuda's economy was in much better shape than it is today, that was cavalier. Today, it is proving to be downright reckless, as Government has belatedly discovered.

Indeed, conservative estimates say that if every senior citizen was enrolled in FutureCare, the annual claims would come to $60 million to $65 million.

That would be offset by around $22 million in premiums from the Island's 7,000 senior citizens and, at the current rate of payment, some $2 million in transfers from the Health Insurance Fund from every insurance policyholder.

That leaves a deficit at least $45 million to be picked up by the taxpayer.

Even at the current rate of enrolment of 3,100 seniors, the fund is likely run a deficit of $19 million, so the $10 million set aside in this year's Budget will be $9 million short.

Still, rather than admit all of this and honestly come up with ways to scale back what was promised, Government resorted to subterfuge.

Government said that the worsening economy required that the scheme be phased in, beginning with those senior citizens enrolled in Government's Health Insurance Programme.

But as soon as that was announced, there was a predictable flood of applications to join HIP, at which point Government simply refused to let anyone else join.

Why? Because the $10 million allocated for FutureCare was inadequate to fund anyone beyond the 3,100 seniors already enrolled in HIP. Indeed, as explained above, there is reason to believe that another $9 million will have to be found by the end of the year.

Furthermore, Government did not raise taxes to fund FutureCare either, presumably on the basis that the economy could not take it.

The net result of that is that at least 3,900 seniors are either in expensive private insurance or without any insurance at all.

Assuming that that same amount of money is required to cover the other 3,900 seniors who will want to join next year, that will mean funding of somewhere around $21 million will be required next year, even without accounting for inflation.

And it is likely that that will not be enough.

And that's not the scary part. The scary part is that Bermuda's senior citizen population, now estimated at 7,000 (and that is probably closer to 8,000), is expected to grow to 9,600 by 2015 and 14,000 by 2030. So imagine what FutureCare will cost then.

Government has created a recipe for disaster, both in public relations and financial terms, or at least that would be the case in the real world. In the other world known as Bermuda, Mr. Bascome instead declared victory.

"The fact that the PLP Government was able to deliver on such a sweeping promise during the middle of an international economic crisis speaks to our sound management of Bermuda's government," he declared before describing more of the benefits.

"Thanks to FutureCare, the medical care our seniors need is significantly more affordable," he concluded.

Those statements sound marvellous, but were not true. At best, less than half of the promise was delivered. More than half Bermuda's seniors are now paying more for health care if they are still with a private insurer.

This isn't sound management. Worse, it isn't even honest.