The government, judging from a reading of the Multiannual State Financial Plan adopted by the Council of Ministers a few days ago, does not foresee any acceleration in the growth of health care outlays, and since, as has been mentioned more than once, the growth in recent years has been quite contractual (we agreed, or, at any rate, a large part of politicians and experts so agreed, that it is "significant" and "historic," while at most outlays have grown only nominally on such a scale, driven, especially in the last three years, by high inflation), one has to face the truth - we will continue to have health at "five," or 5 percent. GDP.
Feature
Małgorzata Solecka
Games instead of bread
Published May 13, 2024 16:26
When there's no bread, politicians always have the igames in store, that is - reforms and systemic changes. These are by all means desirable, but for years the hardest heads in the system have been arguing that for them to work effectively, they can't be "instead of." Increasing outlays, seeking new, stable sources of funding for the system (not necessarily budgetary, because these are like a mangy horse on which the grace of prime ministers rides) would significantly increase not only the likelihood of success, but also the credibility of politicians as to their intentions towards health care. Because we need to be clear, what we want to do (consolidation, coordination, comprehensiveness, inversion of the pyramid of benefits, etc.) - in many other systems is the norm. European systems, of course - because it only makes sense to compare ourselves with those. When the Minister of Health at the European Economic Congress argued that the Polish public system has nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to the offer of health services and cited the United States as a point of reference, many an expert probably quietly (or not) groaned. Where Rome, where Crimea...
Other countries, then, have systems that are more based on coordinated care than Poland's (which also means that a patient can't necessarily expect to consult a specialist or even a GP), have consolidated and harder-to-reach hospitals, have a wider (or any) range of long-term care, offer patients significantly better access to innovative drug therapies - and spend (the EU average) 8 percent of GDP on this. Poland will try to prove that this can be done at least 40 percent cheaper.
What will undoubtedly be of great interest in this matter is the voice of the experts whom the Health Minister appointed last week to the systemic change team. Will they subscribe to a no-cost vision of change (a natural increase in health expenditures, without a clear increase in the percentage of GDP spent on this purpose, cannot be treated as an increase in expenditures, nor can the cash injection from the NAP, which will absorb the lion's share of the otherwise rightful infrastructure spending, be treated as such)? Time will bring the answer, but time - in politics - has a way of disappearing even faster than money. Not only in health.
