The Health Committee will address on Tuesday the financial situation of the National Health Fund and the prospect of the payer settling its obligations for excess and unlimited services. It's hardly surprising, as anxiety on the part of healthcare providers has begun to grow compulsively in recent weeks. In recent days, on the occasion of the General Assembly of the Union of Polish Counties, there were declarations that "in days" settlements for the second quarter will be closed, but - only in the field of non-limited services. Treatment entities are asking what about the overbilling for non-limited services, but here the answers, if any, are neither optimistic nor unequivocal. Likewise, moreover, the answers to questions about settlements for the third - just ending - quarter.
Feature
Małgorzata Solecka
Health minister looks for money in empty pocket
Published Sept. 30, 2024 15:30
The Health Ministry has set aside PLN 1.6 billion in its budget for financing unlimited services in the second quarter. It can be expected that digging deeper into this pocket will yield little - the more the minister looks into it, the more he won't see the money there. And it remains to be seen whether it will be found (and in what amount, if any) by the Finance Minister, whose priority is to simultaneously cut spending and find money to help flood-affected areas.
Flooding and the health care funding gap are emerging as two major disasters. At the same time, both can hardly be classified as unpredictable events - after all, for decades there has been talk about the effects of climate change, which will also bring (bring and will increasingly bring) violent weather events in our latitude and droughts and floods will be part of the new reality. There has also been talk for decades about the effects of the gross under-spending of public funds on health, and in the last two years the previous government has really done a lot to destabilize this poverty-system even more financially. Staying with the flood comparisons - with the construction of the law on minimum wages, the shift of state budget expenditures to the National Health Fund and - last but not least - the expansion of the catalog of unlimited services, the already soaked to the limit dikes protecting the system were broken.
This, of course, does not mean that responsibility for the current situation does not also fall on the current government. The health minister and prime minister should have made a better assessment of the situation back when they took the helm of state. Looking back, it is clear that the health care area has been treated with disregard, as evidenced by the altogether rather despairing confession of one of the Civic Coalition politicians during recent discussions on health care finances: - We were kept in the belief that the NFZ's finances were in excellent condition.
A poor explanation. Since when are assurances from opponents on the other side of the barricade sufficient (or the only) source of information for politicians? Because other sources did not confirm the thesis of the perfect state of the payer's finances. On the contrary.
