The government, contrary to last week's announcements, will not take up the draft amendment to the Law on Health Benefits, which assumes changes in hospitality. When on November 5 the item - extremely important, even fundamental - was not on the agenda of the Council of Ministers (despite the fact that it had been announced personally by Prime Minister Donald Tusk), the Health Minister said that it had not fallen, but had not been included at all, because the project "came out" from the Ministry too late. Now, however, there is no doubt - the item, on hospital reform, has fallen off the agenda.
Feature
Małgorzata Solecka
What about this reform?
Published Nov. 13, 2024 07:55
The reason? Controversy. The Ministry of Health, after public consultations, supplemented the draft with provisions for public hospitals run as commercial companies, including an item providing for the possibility of merging SP ZOZs with companies. Immediately there were protests, an uproar - much of it politically driven - with an afterthought: - They will privatize hospitals.
And although on Thursday the Health Minister explained, during a meeting with journalists, the reasons why the regulations are necessary and safe, and certainly do not mean any privatization of hospitals, just a dozen hours later, on Friday morning, she announced their withdrawal from the draft. And indeed, the latest version no longer provides for the possibility of merging companies with SPOZs.
The conclusions? Rather sad. The Health Ministry is unable to justify and defend its vision of changes in health care. Izabela Leszczyna says that this is what democracy is all about, a willingness to compromise. However, if the work on the concept of changes lasts for months and concerns financial issues, economics more than ideas (although one can guess that at least some opponents or skeptics justify their views precisely with ideology), doesn't the removal of one or two blocks (first the delivery rooms, i.e. the abandonment of the criteria written into the law in favor of an opinion issued at the level of the governor, now the issues related to the companies) put into question the possibility of achieving the stated goals?
One politician will say "yes," another politician will say "no," to travesty a circulating saying. However, the added value of the draft changes in hospitality was to be its preparation by a team of experts. One has to ask, of course, whether a cardinal mistake was not made already at this stage - the omission of nearly 140 public hospitals operating in the form of companies forced a significant modification of the project after the close of consultations.
Either way, every week of delay in the law increases the threat to billions of zlotys from the National Reconstruction Plan. Billions that were already "written with a finger on the water" at the stage of preparing the NPO - all because of the previous government's decision to write the non-existent Hospital Modernization Law as a milestone. A race against time is underway, and it would have been better if the health ministry had been proactive in this matter.
