Prague, June 18 (CTK) – The Czech Social Democrats (CSSD) started considering the introduction of healthcare fees covered directly by patients for the first time as the party finally realised that all cannot be paid from the compulsory insurance forever, Martin Zverina says in daily Lidove noviny (LN) Friday.
When the CSSD was in the opposition, it promised to cancel most of the fees introduced in health care by right-wing governments. The present centre-left government of Bohuslav Sobotka (CSSD), appointed in January 2014, has met the promise.
Zverina says Health Minister Svatopluk Nemecek (CSSD) who had always rejected any cash fees, recently admitted such a possibility.
Nemecek would like to start a discussion about the issue this summer, Zverina writes, appreciating this as “a bit of common sense.”
However, Nemecek’s statement implies that nearly three years were wasted only because it took the Social Democrats so long to become aware that health care spendings cannot be covered unless patients pay more, especially in future, Zverina writes.
If any direct financial participation is agreed on, it will be introduced in the next election period starting in late 2017 only, he says.
Zverina praises Nemecek for proposing two fields in which patients might pay more – plastic surgery and reproduction medicine.
The higher payments should not concern those who have been fighting infertility for a long time. But the state should not sponsor the expensive treatment of those who preferred their professional career and later decided to have a baby as a bonus to their career when they were past the reproduction age, Zverina writes.
He challenges Nemecek’s statement that health care must be without extra payments.
This idea is untenable even if the Czech Republic spent on health care a higher portion of GDP than is the European average and all the spendings were covered from the state budget, Zverina writes.
Healthcare expenditures have no upper limit as better, more effective and more expensive treatment of individual diagnoses will be always available and the budget will always be limited, Zverina says.
The present absence of above-standard treatment that would be available for additional payments harms mostly poor people and it punishes those who take care of their health, he writes.
The rich can receive the special treatment in commercial medical facilities, in which they cover the whole cost, while those with lower incomes cannot afford this. If they were to pay only the difference between standard care covered from their insurance and the above-standard care, the special treatment would be far more available to them. The CSSD ignores these patients, however, Zverina writes.
