PLN 18 billion is not enough. It is not enough, and it is very...

One may wonder about the legal aspect of this operation - after all, the financial plan is still not approved and has not been published (Andrzej Domanski claims that negotiations with the Health Ministry on this issue are ongoing all the time), and quite recently, representatives of the NFZ explained during a meeting of the Health Committee that only a decision of the NFZ president is sufficient to change the Fund's financial plan, but only in cases where it is a matter of allocating funds within the plan - in this way, the plan was changed to pay for non-limited services thanks to the dissolution of the financial reserve. Any change on the revenue or cost side beyond the allocation must go through a full procedure, including an opinion at the Diet. But for it to be possible, the financial plan must first be approved.

However, the substance is what matters most. When the Sejm passed the budget, Marcelina Zawisza, on behalf of the Together party, fought for an amendment increasing the subject subsidy to the NFZ by PLN 20 billion. The government majority rejected the amendment, even though already during the work and representatives of the Health Ministry and coalition deputies admitted that eventually the budget would have to find additional money anyway, because the planned PLN 18 billion would not be enough. It's not enough, and it's not enough. Modest estimates of the health ministry, presented since the beginning of the year, amounted to about PLN 17-18 billion, and this amount is still valid, because the health ministry expects that in addition to the PLN 4 billion already transferred to the NFZ in the recent past in addition to the planned subsidy, a minimum of PLN 13 billion will be needed, among other things, in order to be able to retarify the benefits associated with the implementation of the minimum wage law. It is also worth recalling that the law will be implemented in the second half of the year - all signs point to this - without even a minimal loosening of the "cost loop," because the bill assuming changes in hospitality is once again stuck in the government and its fate is, for now, unknown. Assuming the necessary vacatio legis and the uncertain timing of the legislation's entry into force, it can be assumed that in the second half of the year almost nothing will change in hospitals, on the labor cost side.

During the recent Health Advocates Congress (April 1-2), the president of the National Association of Employers of County Hospitals said that hospitals will not survive this year's increase operation if they are not guaranteed smooth funding for the services performed. If they don't have a guarantee that money will be transferred regularly and in accordance with the services performed, rather than in accordance with the payer's financial capacity. It can be said that hospitals repeat the same thing every year - and somehow they survive, although of course there is no shortage of decisions to close departments or suspend their operations. The shroud of secrecy is revealed by local government officials, who, for example, during meetings of parliamentary teams dealing with the problems of county hospitals, reveal that they feed the hospitals with funds from the sale of real estate, and that this money is used, among other things, for pay raises. However, the number of properties that county offices can sell, as they are primarily concerned, is finite, and the question of how such actions will be judged from the point of view of economy is certainly not unreasonable.