Health money 2025: an even bigger disaster?

The Together Party did not enter the government, although it remains part of the parliamentary coalition supporting the government - but it did not support the draft of the most important government bill of each year. Already on Thursday, both during the first reading of the budget bill and during the discussion of the Health Ministry's information on the current financial situation in health care, politicians from the Left - especially the Together party - stressed their distance from government policy.

What money can the health system count on next year? Finance Minister Andrzej Domanski assured that outlays will increase significantly. - Today we face not only the challenges of ensuring security and economic development, but also, and perhaps most importantly, improving the quality of life of citizens. We will allocate PLN 221.7 billion for health care in 2025. This is PLN 30 billion more than in the current year," he stressed. Domanski also referred to the topic of the health contribution for entrepreneurs, which has been hot in recent weeks and months (this is another issue that divides the coalition, the Left is strongly against privileges for entrepreneurs, in addition to the situation of a tight NFZ budget and state budget problems). - The budget secured PLN 4 billion for the implementation of the commitment to reduce the health premium for entrepreneurs. As a first step, we have referred to work a project to eliminate the health premium on the sale of fixed assets, Domanski said. In the past week, the government's draft began the legislative path, but Poland 2050 has announced that it will present its own draft, going further than the government's proposals.

Politicians are arguing about the premium reduction, but also shifting responsibility for the current, very difficult, financial situation of the NFZ. On Thursday, at the request of the Law and Justice Party, the Health Ministry presented information on the subject and Deputy Minister Marek Kos recalled that the Fund's financial plan, which is currently being implemented, was prepared and approved back in the summer of 2023, before the parliamentary elections. Kos said he was surprised by the topic of discussion, because what the situation of the health budget would be was obvious months ago. Minister Izabela Leszczyna, on the other hand, said a few days earlier that the financial plan had been "poorly prepared" and that is why there is a shortage of money at the moment.

The Left looks at the issue differently. - That the NFZ already has really serious liquidity problems at this point is probably obvious to everyone in this room. It is also clear that there will be a shortage of money this year, that those plans that were supposed to be realized, will not be realized," said Adrian Zandberg. - What about next year? Because, after all, this story will repeat itself. According to the financial plan, which is for next year, according to the plans that are written in the budget, a similar, only on an even larger scale disaster is written there. My question to the ministry is this: What do you want to do next year? It's not just a matter of saving ourselves here and now from some technical problem, it's a systemic problem in that we've had underfunded public health care for years, and unfortunately in the budget plan prepared by the Ministry of Finance it's a return to the old PiS mistakes," the politician said.