AKEL denounces government attempts to promote health insurance companies interests

 

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 30th March 2015, Nicosia

 

The panic that has overwhelmed the Minister of Health about AKEL’s conclusions on the Health sector is obvious. However, we didn’t expect the distortion of AKEL’s positions and statements by the Minister of Health to defend his policy.

The results of the policy implemented by the Government and the Ministry of Health are unfortunately visible through the collapse of state hospitals and the health sector in general. It is finally time the “leaders of the crisis” and their Ministers assume their responsibilities. They have been in power for more than two years and we are now suffering the results of their own policies in the Health sector too.

We consider the Ministry of Health’s attempts to create a climate of confusion, the search for scapegoats and the shifting of its own responsibilities on to the Health Insurance Organization (HIO), AKEL and the economic crisis as unfortunate and at the same time provocative. We would like to remind the Minister of Health of some of the government’s backtracking and covert attempts to promote the interests of the insurance companies.

– So far the government has postponed the implementation of the General Health Scheme (GHS) three times and has unilaterally altered its content and philosophy.

– Up to last September the government and the Ministry of Health were pledging that they would proceed with the existing plans. After changing course and until last December they were talking about a single-insurance GHS, but with the marginalization of the Health Insurance Organization and the transfer of all the decisions on competences and powers to the Ministry of Health. Now they are again changing direction and talking about the selling off of the Health System from scratch to the insurance companies.

– The Ministry of Health has had since September 2013 in its possession the revised bill and has not submitted it to the House of Representatives. According to the Road Map which the Ministry itself had agreed with the Troika the bill in question should have been tabled in the House of Representatives by the end of September 2014. After four monthly postponements, now there is a nine-month postponement and they are stating that they will table it by the end of 2015.

– After the pressure we exerted and on our perseverance a provision was inserted in the Memorandum for a study of a multi-insurance system that would have been ready by the end of 2014. The study was completed in February 2015. Its conclusions remain a closely guarded secret, unknown to the political forces and society, and now the Ministry of Health has announced the waging of a new “comparative” it says study about the multi-insurance system.

AKEL, once again far from the petty-political considerations and experiences characterizing the statement issued by the Minister of Health yesterday, calls on the government and the Ministry of Health, if they really want to see the implementation of the GHS, to proceed immediately without any backtracking to the practical application of the GHS as it was unanimously approved in 2011 and after the framework of the Parliamentary Committee on Health was agreed by a broad social consensus.

We declare that any changes to the legislation that will enhance transparency and social control will be supported by AKEL. However, we will not stop denouncing the attempts to sell-off the health sector to certain circles and interests, as well as defending the provision of quality health care to the Cypriot citizen.