Medical Fund: 7 billion in unused funds

This is a result of the low efficiency of spending the money guaranteed by the Medical Fund Law - only a portion of the money has been managed. Deputy Health Minister Wojciech Konieczny, presenting the information, stressed that the Health Ministry was not prepared to distribute such a large amount of money, especially since it was only the amendment to the Medical Fund Law, carried out in 2022, that "streamlined" the paths for spending a large part of the funds dedicated to the various subfunds.

This, however, as MPs pointed out, has resulted in chaos in spending money. In addition, as Prof. Alicja Chybicka (KO) said, it can be seriously doubted whether the Medical Fund is really needed in the health care system, especially since it does not bring in any additional money (the funds come from the state budget, if there were no FM, the budget would have to increase the subject subsidy to the National Health Fund - at least in the current legal state). Prof. Chybicka stressed that all FM tasks should and can be carried out at the moment either within the framework of funds from the National Health Fund, or - from the budget of the Minister of Health.

It was known from the very beginning (as Wojciech Konieczny also said) that the current ruling majority looked and looks at the Medical Fund with a reluctant eye. - It was a political idea, a kind of counter-proposal to the Senate's February 2020 proposal to allocate the money that was to go to public media to, among other things, oncology, Konieczny recalled. Politics is the "original sin" of the Medical Fund - from the very beginning until now. When Boleslaw Piecha (Law and Justice) asked if there were plans to liquidate the Medical Fund Konieczny replied that the Health Ministry is not considering such a scenario for the time being, also for political reasons. - It seems that in the coming months, several months, the likelihood of liquidating the Medical Fund is slim," the deputy health minister said, referring to the fact that the term of office of Andrzej Duda, on whose initiative the FM was created, expires in the summer of 2025. At the same time, Konieczny stressed that even if - now or in the future - a decision is made to liquidate the FM, all projects whose financing has begun (primarily investment projects) will continue.

Last year, the Medical Fund came under the microscope of the Supreme Administrative Court. The auditors pointed out that for two years after the Fund's establishment, most of the tasks had not been implemented or the degree of progress in their implementation due to delays was negligible.

Money in a wider stream from the FM to the health system didn't start flowing until 2023, but even so, the funds available at the moment amount to nearly PLN 7.5 billion. Recently, health care finance experts have pointed out that tapping into this money and redirecting it directly to the National Health Fund would represent a significant increase in resources in the health care system.

The Health Committee asked the ministry to detail the information and Bartosz Arlukowicz, chairman of the NC, did not rule out that deputies would revisit the topic.