Government’s plans for an American-style health system
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 24th April 2014, Nicosia
The recent public statements of the Minister of Health Phillipos Patsalides of the Anastasiades Government are quite revealing of their intentions to abandon the existing plans for the National Health Scheme.
Behind closed doors they are searching for ways to disengage themselves from the studies conducted by internationally renowned agencies specialising on Health Scheme issues which prove that the only feasible and sustainable National Health Scheme for Cyprus is the one proposed by Health Insurance Organisation (HIO).
The Government of the Democratic Rally DISY party, faithful to its neoliberal policy of austerity, cuts and privatisations prefers a mixed, at best, Health Scheme, with the private – mainly foreign – insurance companies playing the most important and prominent role.
To achieve this goal, they are reducing expenditure dramatically in the Health sector, under-staffing Public Hospitals, “offering” reduced wages and adverse working conditions to doctors, nursing staff and hospital workers, as well as reducing the care and medication of chronically ill patients below safety limits.
As AKEL, we issue a warning that the abandonment of the National Health Scheme and the involvement of the private insurance companies in Health will lead to the deterioration of health care. Tens of thousands of uninsured people will be denied the provision of Health care.
The insurance companies will impose their own terms on the state, doctors and patients in line with their own economic interests. We will ultimately have an American-style Health System where the rich will enjoy a high-level of health and medical care, whilst the majority of the population will be denied access to Health and thousands of uninsured people dying outside hospitals.
Furthermore, we denounce the dismantling of the welfare state and solidarity in the Health sector and urge everyone, political parties, trade unions, organised associations of chronic patients to react militantly and in an organised and coordinated way in order to defeat and overturn the plans of the Government of the Right for a Health system of privileges and inequalities.
