The Minister remains silent

Reducing the health premium - for businesses in the first step, perhaps for the rest of the insured in the next - is a topic that divides the government coalition. The government, or at least the prime minister, the finance minister and the health minister, are of the opinion that all the budget (and the current health care financing system) can afford is to withdraw from that part of the changes introduced in the Polish Deal that burdened entrepreneurs with a health premium on income from the sale of fixed assets. This is not a small amount at all - about PLN 4 billion. The Finance Minister is able to find money in next year's budget to cover this gap - and only this gap. There is no talk of a flat rate contribution for entrepreneurs, dependent on income. There is also no space to talk about extending it to the rest of the citizens, because that would result in the state budget having to find several times the amount of money it is committing to health care at the moment. And the fact that the budget will have to find significantly more money for health is certain even without the revolutionary ideas of Szymon Holownia's party - this is directly shown in the report, prepared by a team of experts at the Federation of Polish Entrepreneurs, which was presented at the end of June.

One could assume then that politicians - moved by the vision of a financial gap in the health care system - would begin (after all, the government and parliament were working at full steam in July) to discuss remedies. That we would discuss how to realistically increase the level of public spending on health. However, nothing of the sort has happened, and proof of how politicians (of all options) are not keen on the topic of health care financing is the fate of the appeal to Prime Minister Donald Tusk by patients' organizations in July on the financial situation of health care. Patients wanted, among other things, to start discussions on raising the revenue target to 8 percent of GDP (with a real percentage of 5.4 percent, this horizon seems very distant, but it's not even the EU average). However, the authors of the appeal were not answered by the prime minister. And not even the Minister of Health, which, apart from the content of the response itself, makes it possible to draw the right conclusions. Sad ones.

Minister Izabela Leszczyna is right, of course - at the moment the topic of health premiums is pure politics. But the topic of health expenditures is no longer such a vanity fair, and one would have expected the health minister to be a key animator of the debate on this topic. However, nothing of the sort has happened. And it still hasn't.