People need a National Health Scheme as it had been planned and agreed
Statement of Georgos Loucaides, AKEL C.C. Spokesperson
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 19th January 2016, Nicosia
When the Government won the Presidency it took delivery of a comprehensive plan for the establishment of National Health Scheme (NHS) at an affordable cost to all social agencies and with a timetable for its implementation by the end of 2015. Instead of fulfilling this plan, in the last three years, the Government presents a new proposal every year. In 2013 it froze the NHS and began a discussion for a multi-insurance NHS. In 2014 it prepared two bills for a NHS and its autonomy which completely changed the entire planning that had been drawn up and is now making a proposal for a mini- NHS, as it calls it.
In addition, when the government took office in 2013, expenditure on public health was approximately 100 million Euros more than it is today. The government and ruling forces have led public hospitals to a critical state, while the exodus of competent doctors to the private sector is an almost daily occurrence.
This government had also pledged that the amount in excess of 60 million, which it collects annually from the co-payments in public hospitals and the contributions of public servants, would be invested back into the public health. Instead, this amount in excess of 60 million ends up in the Minister of Finance’s consolidated fund. Now the government proposes an anti- NHS where citizens will be taxed with an additional 200 million Euros without guaranteeing them even the bare minimum.
The endless regressions, the changes in the planning, the postponements in the implementation of the NHS and the improvisations in their approaches with regards such a serious issue, create certainty as to their true intentions, that are none other than to serve specific big private interests against the public interest and citizen’s health.
AKEL again urges the Minister of Health and the government to:
- Proceed immediately to the submission and approval of the legislative framework for the implementation of the NHS as it had been planned, as it had been unanimously approved in 2001 and that was subsequently agreed in the Parliamentary Committee on Health of the House of Representatives with a broad social consensus.
- Bring back the expenditure on health to the levels they were when they assumed office and to the amounts that are collected from the co-payments to the public hospitals and that civil servant’s contributions should be invested back in public health.
- To engage in a genuine dialogue with the opposition and the agencies in health that will be guided by the public interest and the provision of equal quality health service for all citizens.
