The president and chief of one of the Island?s leading domestic insurance companies has challenged locals to lead efforts to curb healthcare costs by practicing healthy living habits.

Speaking to the Hamilton Kiwanis Club on Monday night, Gerald Simons, president and CEO of the Argus Group and a former Government Minister, said he thought Bermuda had an enviable health care system, but that prices had risen steadily through the years.

He said there were many reasons for this, but one way individuals could help out was to live healthier lifestyles.

?Individuals also have a role to play in this challenge of controlling costs, because many of the diseases that cost us a lot of money as a community are diseases of lifestyle; heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure leading to strokes and other problems, some forms of cancer, can be controlled if people eat better and exercise more,? he said.

?Improved wellness leads to shorter stays in hospital, it is as simple as that, shorter stays and less money means lower premiums,? he said.

But Mr. Simons said companies here are not leaving it all up to their clients to follow a plan for healthier living. Although limited locally, with medical costs in Bermuda being controlled by the Health Ministry, Mr. Simons said Argus and other companies do shop around for where it is most cost-effective for clients to be treated overseas.

?Health insurance has been rising steadily over the last four or five years at rates well in excess of ten percent and 15 percent and I wish I could say that we had seen the end to that. The reasons for these rapid increase in costs have been set out over and over again; people are ageing and older people use more insurance and medical care, technology is driving up the cost so that a stent that cost $1,000 a few years ago, a little device that keeps your heart open after heart surgery, they can now cost up to $2,500 each because they are now infused with drugs so that the stent can stay in place for a longer period.

?People expect more of their health care and then there is the very increasing cost of new drugs in particular, and so replacing old drugs with new drugs are typically much more expensive. I should also say that insurance companies have played a role in pushing up costs by extending benefits and raising expectations. We should say to that countries the world over are facing similar challenges over the issue of cost and there is not a healthcare system anywhere that isn?t facing similar problems.?

He said that Argus last year transferred as much overseas treatment as it could to Canada, because the care is equal, sometimes better, than would be received in the US, but at a saving.

?By so doing we have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in claims, that we would have otherwise have paid and the result of that is very simple ? if claims are not as high as they have been, premiums do not have to be as high as they have been so that we try as far as we can to mitigate the rapid increase of healthcare costs and health insurance premiums,? Mr. Simons said.

Looking at Bermuda?s neighbours, he said Canada and the UK had public health systems. Mr. Simons recognised the Canadian model as being particularly effective in providing its citizens access to healthcare ?without regard to financial ability?.

He said the US was another scenario entirely, with the government-funded medicare system covering about 41 million of the country?s total 290 million population. He said benefits were not very generous under medicare while a further 41.4 million people in the US were covered under something called medicaid, a system designed to cover, to a degree, the poor.

Alarmingly, a further 45 million in the US ? or about 15 percent of the population ? were said to have no health insurance at all.

Mr. Simons said whatever country you looked at, how healthcare is provided and at what cost, is a hot political potato.

But the former MP said he was always surprised how little debate there is on the Island on healthcare, save for concerns on rising costs.

?By and large politicians in Bermuda have not had to focus on health insurance and health care in the same way that they focus on crime and education and, of course, housing, by contrast to a politician in Canada or the States, where members of parliament could speak on their respective healthcare systems at length at the drop of a hat because healthcare represents a key part of their political platform,? he said.

As for why there has been so little debate on the subject at home, Mr. Simons said he thought this was because Bermudians have enjoyed access to quality healthcare either at home or abroad.

He said most locals were covered by health care policies at their place of employment, and where that was not the case, the mostly Government-funded charity, the Lady Cubitt Compassionate Association (LCCA), stepped in.

?Essentially we have a situation where most people have access to quality care in Bermuda and overseas that they can afford,? he said.

He praised public-private partnerships for creating a healthcare system giving most Bermudians access to the care they need.

?This has come about because of a complex interaction between Government and private organisations and the community at large. Government is involved as a regulator of the whole system through the passage of two important acts, the Hospital Insurance Act of 1970 and the Bermuda Hospitals Board Act,? Mr. Simons said.

?Other factors also play an important role. Private insurance companies play an important part in the equation and also the general environment, particularly the shortage of labour in the job market and a growing, very successful economy. But what we have in Bermuda today, in essence, is a national health system with a law that says that everybody must have insurance that is funded and supported by insurance companies and services that are supplied by private providers.?

Bermudians have had to pay however for this strong healthcare system, and Mr. Simons pointed out that those who are not eligible to take part in an employers? health care plan may not have had access to the same care as others. He said that this had prompted Argus to recently unveil a product aimed at this market.

?Now as good as the system is, the system is not perfect, certain groups have not had easy access to the benefits that I have just described,? he said.

?Employers who buy insurance on a group basis have the advantage of large numbers, central administration, low admin costs and a steady flow of new and young workers coming in at the bottom and older ones going at the top and so the younger people effectively subsidise the healthcare of the older people and there is a standard rate of cost for everybody.

?Individual health insurance does not have those advantages and the results of that is until now, many retirees, seniors, students and the self employed didn?t have the opportunity from our company of having these extensive benefits. And so we therefore developed a health insurance product to remedy these concerns and the essence of the product is that our young people and seniors can be covered for major medical, or prescription drugs and for doctors visits if they choose and I say, if they choose, because our products offers a choice for people.?