Instead of a fast track - a detour! Hospitality bill returns to consultation

On Tuesday, the government was supposed to deal with the approval of a bill that had already failed to enter the agenda once (November 5). On November 13, nothing changed in this regard - the agenda of the Council of Ministers again did not include an item on changes in hospitality, there was instead an item devoted to information from the Minister of Health on the current situation in health care and planned changes, and an item on further changes in health premiums.

Also on the contribution issue, binding decisions have not been made - this is expected to happen next week, on Tuesday. Meanwhile, a block on "contribution" projects is on the agenda of the Sejm. In addition to the government's (it was to have a first reading in the Health Committee during the first November session), there are two parliamentary projects awaiting consideration - one submitted by Poland 2050 and one by the Law and Justice party (the latter aims, as MPs in Jaroslaw Kaczynski's party wrote, to return to the state of affairs before 2021, i.e. before Mateusz Morawiecki's government introduced the Polish Deal solutions). What is known, however, is that there is a directional agreement from the Left to relieve the smallest entrepreneurs as a first step - in addition to the elimination of the health contribution on income from the sale of fixed assets, the minimum health contribution is to be reduced. At the moment it is calculated on 100 percent of the minimum wage, after the changes it will be calculated on 75 percent.

The aftermath of Wednesday's cabinet meeting also includes the decision that the so-called hospital reform project will return to public consultation. Although the Health Minister said on Thursday that she has the support of the entire government for the project, it is known that coalition partners have expressed far-reaching reservations - as evidenced by the public statement of Deputy Minister Wojciech Konieczny, who said outright on Wednesday that he does not subscribe to the project and that it requires further consultations. Many concerns were also articulated by the people's party. The immediate reason for this unusual procedure of re-consultation of the draft, which has gone through the entire consultation process, is the addition to it - after the consultations were completed - of provisions concerning, among other things, the possibility of merging hospitals operating in the form of SP ZOZs with hospitals operating in the form of companies. There have been accusations of opening up privatization processes in this way. And although the Health Minister publicly debunked the privatization scenarios and later decided to remove the most controversial provisions from the draft, this did not convince those who are not enthusiastic about the Hospital Act.