The Senate rejected the quality bill. There was no surprise

The Senate's veto was already virtually certain before the Senate Health Committee's meeting, when its chairwoman revealed during the Health Challenges Congress in Katowice that Senate legislators had found a number of serious constitutional flaws in the bill. At the time, Beata Małecka-Libera stressed that the Senate seeks to amend laws, but those that are directly unconstitutional it cannot amend, upholding the Basic Law. The debate during the Health Committee meeting was an opportunity to present these objections and also the senators' comments.

During Thursday's Senate session, it was synthesized by Senator Małecka-Libera, who called the document a "conglomeration" of unrelated provisions. She criticized the bill for yet another iteration of the centralization of the system by abolishing the Quality Monitoring Center and transferring its tasks to the National Health Fund, which she said would result in a conflict of interest, since the accreditation of entities will be carried out by the same institution that contracts services with them.

Małecka-Libera also spoke of criticism of the bill from, among others, the medical council and some patient organizations in the context of the no-fault system.

Much excitement has been aroused over an amendment to the government bill introduced in the Sejm, providing for the transfer of 20 million zlotys in the original version, and then and finally 50 million zlotys from the National Health Fund's reserve fund to the Fund for the Development of Physical Culture, to be used to subsidize half-schools. The money, Sports Minister Kamil Bortniczuk explained in the Sejm, is to be used to fund advice from psychologists, physiotherapists and nutritionists - all as part of a joint project by the Health and Sports Ministries to promote healthy lifestyles. In the Senate, Deputy Health Minister Maciej Miłkowski said the health ministry was surprised by the parliamentary amendment, but added that since the money will go to a good cause, "one can only give thanks." It seems almost impossible that indeed Law and Justice deputies surprised - at some stage - the health department. When, in early February, the Parliamentary Health Committee deliberated on the subcommittee's report (which it ultimately did not adopt) and the issue of the amendment providing for the transfer of money to the Fund for the Development of Physical Culture surfaced, Deputy Minister Waldemar Kraska was not only not surprised, but explained to deputies exactly what the money would be used for. In turn, the dot over the "i" was put a month later by Minister Bortniczuk, extensively referring to MPs the reasons why the ministries decided on a "joint project" (half-funded by the sports ministry, by the way; the money provided by the NFZ is to be the health ministry's "input").