National Health Insurance Fund once again has become a precious hostage to politics that may in no way solve its colossal problems. MPs voted at first reading the institution’s budget for 2014, and it will endure only with help from God or if it takes draconian control over the costs of hospitals. As for the help the second reading of the bill will wait for the triumphant return of the famous 1.4 billion levs nationalized by GERD party’s former Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov. However it was not clear whether this money is still hiding in the fiscal reserve, or was spent with the budget of 2011.
It looks as if GERB party has undergone an amazing metamorphosis in their understanding of how to spend the funds for healthcare after their former health minister Desislava Atanasova said that between the first and second reading their party will submit a proposal the amount to be returned to the budget of the Healthcare Fund. In an official statement by the Central Bank, as quoted by socialist MP Maya Manolova, on 30 December 2010 the bank officially closed the current account of the healthcare department, transferring the available amount of 1.413 billion levs to the account of the central budget. The chairman of the Parliament’s budget committee Yordan Tsonev quite reasonably pointed out that the transfer of the money from health insurance fund from a target into a general reserve is a crime for which he hopes the Prosecution sought responsibility from Simeon Dyankov. However, it will probably not take any action since it hasn’t done so by now. Obviously, such an initiative should come from the highest echelons of power.
The voted budget of the Fund for 2014 was called fair and honest by the rulers and a budget of the empty promises by the opposition. But the truth is that it is neither the former, nor the latter. To be fair, the estimate should be equally split between all players in the healthcare market, but it is not. On the other hand, people who prepared it do not promise comfort and luxury – they rather say tighten your belts to save the system from a total collapse.
In nominal terms the Health Insurance Fund in 2014 will have 113 million levs in excess of what it has had in 2013, as estimates say its cost will come to 2.82 billion levs. Of these, 2.47 billion levs is provided for health insurance payments. The problem is that all identified cost increases on items with the exception of money on oncology and haemodialysis seem too be very much left-wing and not quite appropriate at the backdrop of the waiting deficits in other areas. For example, there are more resources for GPs, dentists, and the fee for a checkup of a pensioner was reduced to BGN1 lev. This is not bad, but no one said how this will solve the conundrum with hospitals. In Budget 2013 the money sufficed to cover their expenses only up until September and next year the sum will be by BGN200 million levs less. In the words of Samir Abumelih of GERB party in 2014 the country expects a record-high 2 million hospitalizations.
The financial calculations may somehow turn correct only in case of colossal changes in the system that will make many people cry.
The other main issue directly affecting the Fund’s budget is that the current model of healthcare creates and will continue to generate a deficit that politicians still do not know how to handle with. The chairman of the healthcare committee in Parliament, Dr. Nigyar Jaffer said that in 2007 the uninsured Bulgarians were 700,000 people, and by the middle of 2011 their number crossed the psychological barrier of 2 million people. According to Emil Raynov the former government of GERD demotivated Bulgarians to pay their health insurance contributions and there is no power how to make them return back to the right path.
The BANKER
