The president did not take into account the requests for a veto and signed the amendment to the Act on the Professions of Physician and Dentist. This means a loss - as experts estimate and the stakeholders of the health care system fear - about PLN 13 billion from the budget of the National Health Fund only next year.
Health spending: The president signed the bill
Published Dec. 22, 2022 14:52
Fot: Andrzej Hrechorowicz; prezydent.pl
The act, signed by Andrzej Duda, transfers the financing of all health services from the budget of the Minister of Health (those that still remained in it) to the National Health Fund. These include emergency medical services, treatment programs for patients with haemophilia and AIDS/HIV, a program of free medicines for seniors and pregnant women, preventive vaccinations under the PSO and highly specialized procedures. It costs over PLN 5.5 billion. In addition, the National Health Fund will lose revenues from health insurance premiums, financed so far by the state budget, e.g. for the unemployed and employees of uniformed services and will have to pay up to PLN 5.5 billion from its reserve fund to the COVID-19 Prevention Fund (as the government assures).
Twenty-six organizations associating patients and medical professionals sought to veto the law (the appeal was signed by, among others, the National Health Protection Secretariat of NSZZ Solidarność, which had previously protested against this law within the bodies responsible for social dialogue), but also by hospital directors and local government units.
The signatories of the appeal, which we informed about on Wednesday, argued that the health care system loses PLN 13 billion in real terms, when the guarantees provided by the act 7 percent. GDP for health are not enough. There are justified reasons to believe that the act will not work in 2023, i.e. the contributions will be enough to reach the minimum level of the percentage of health expenditures in GDP assumed in the act. Reason? High inflation and reference of nominal outlays on health to GDP two years ago. Experts point out that two years of high, over a dozen percent inflation (2022 and 2023) completely demolish the already weak operation of the act passed in 2017. During the work in the Senate, Deputy Minister of Health Maciej Miłkowski admitted that public spending on health, planned for over PLN 165 billion, in 2023 will amount to less than 5 percent of GDP. real GDP. Meanwhile, calculated according to the N-2 methodology, they will exceed the level of 6 percent. (2021 GDP).
- The act submitted to the President contains a number of solutions leading to a permanent reduction of public financing of health care services, emphasized the signatories of the appeal, justifying that they consider the regulation to be a direct threat to the health care system.
