A PHILOSOPHICAL divide has opened up in the 70-year-old People's National Party (PNP) with the party leader and its general secretary enunciating contrasting positions on the abolition of user fees to access health care.

One day after Peter Bunting blasted the Jamaica Labour Party government for its decision to abolish fees to access public health care, PNP President Portia Simpson Miller lauded the Government's decision.

"Sickness is no respector of persons and the fact that people could not afford to pay hospital fees was always a source of great distress to me," Simpson Miller said in her contribution to the 2008-2009 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives.

"I want to commend the minister and the Government for staying on course by continuing what I had started - by making health care for children free from 0-18 years of age - with the intention of continuing the process. I commend the Government for taking the next step, which is to abolish user fees for adults," Simpson Miller said.

Two views

Simpson Miller was making her first contribution to the Budget Debate in her capacity as leader of the opposition.

On Wednesday, Bunting, the party's general secretary, sang a different tune.

"I subscribe to a philosophy of personal responsibility," Bunting, opposition spokesman on industry and commerce, said on Wednesday.

"The first responsibility of the welfare of the family must be with the parents," Bunting said. "When a good or service is totally free, it tends not to be appreciated and is used most inefficiently."

Yesterday, however, Bunting sat back quietly as Simpson Miller said the abolition of health fees was a good idea.

The differing positions of the PNP hierarchy did not go unnoticed as Bunting was heckled by Government members and urged to pay penance.

"Repent! Repent!" said Government member Gregory Mair, while Dr St Aubyn Bartlett quipped that he should resign as general secretary.