“2025 will be a watershed year for the National Health System. With the most and most massive reforms that will completely change its image, improving the Health services provided to our fellow citizens” emphasized the Minister of Health Adonis Georgiadis during his discussion State Budget for the year 2025 in its plenary session Parliament

For the National Health System, Mr. Georgiadis said that in 2025, the State Budget, for the first time, has a credit of more than three billion euros for the 126 public hospitals. Amount “which is 100% more than it was at the time of SYRIZA” and this is “the answer to those who say the huge nonsense that the SSY is collapsing”.

In 2025, said Mr. Georgiadis, “it will be a year when most of the renovation projects of the building infrastructure of the NHS hospitals that have been done since its establishment will be completed due to the Recovery Fund”. Specifically, “at this moment in all the country’s public hospitals, the Emergency Departments are being renovated, as are many old clinics” and he gave the example of the Attica Hospital – where Emergency Departments (EDs) five times larger than the existing ones are being created – and the Metaxas hospital.

Mr. Georgiadis stated that “the total expenditure for the building renovation of the hospitals and Health Centers of the National Health Service in 2025 is more than 500 million. euros – these are in addition to the 3 billion euros that are given to NHS hospitals for their operation – while there are another 100 million. euros of the Recovery Fund, which is for the purchase of medical equipment for hospitals and Health Centers”. This means, as underlined by Mr. Georgiadis, that “we will also acquire completely new equipment for almost all of the NHS”.

The minister asserted that today “ESY hospitals are working better”. Commenting on the criticism that the NHS is understaffed, he said that “if you count their staff only by permanent staff, as the trade unionists usually do, we actually have less permanent staff than we had in 2019. But if you count staff with all the serving staff, i.e. also the workers with other forms of work (auxiliary or with a block, etc.) today we have more staff – by 10,000 more than we had in 2019”.

“I care about having doctors, nurses and staff in hospitals. Their working relationships are a secondary issue. What I want is for the patient to find staff,” said the Minister of Health.

Mr. Georgiadis also referred to the “great and emblematic action of the Spyros Doxiadis Program for preventive examinations”. He criticized the opposition because “you have mocked and mocked them, because you don’t want to say a self-evident good reason, because this is the first government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis to carry out an organized – and on a massive scale – a preventive examination program worth half a billion euros and aimed at over 6 million of our fellow citizens”. At the same time, he announced that at the beginning of 2025, the examination program for the prevention of heart and brain diseases will begin.

Giving the overall account of the Budget for 2025, the minister stated that “this year, the money that will be given to the National Social Security along with the money from the Recovery Fund, will be almost three times that of 2019 and we will have plus 10,000 more staff . “Well, the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis in practice proves both its support and its decision to strengthen the National Social Security System”.

Responding to remarks by opposition MPs, Mr. Georgiadis said that private health spending compared to the last year of SYRIZA’s government, in 2019, which was 36.08%, has decreased, since at the end of 2023 it was 34% according to Eurostat. The ESY during the SYRIZA government received 1,500,000,000 euros from the Budget and in 2025 it will receive 3,100,000,000 euros. Regarding the increase in waiting lists for surgeries, the minister said that this happened, as during the pandemic there was a suspension of operations and this pressure created now is being solved with the free afternoon surgeries, which you voted against. For better public dental coverage, the minister said that an optimal solution is being sought with the WHO.

Regarding the CT scanner at the Rhodes hospital, the minister said that “indeed, it was only out of order for a day until the damage it presented was repaired. For this case, the hospital has a permanent contract with a neighboring private center in order to meet the needs of the patients, at no cost to them. In fact, that is why one of the new CT scanners that will be purchased through the resources of the Recovery Fund, will go to the hospital of Rhodes where the CT scanner is ten years old and constantly showing malfunctions.

At the same time, referring to the more general political debate surrounding the confrontation that is developing between the government and the opposition regarding the course of the economy in the context of the Budget, Mr. Georgiadis said that “obviously the respective government defends the Budget it submits, and the opposition disputes it”. But, noted Mr. Georgiadis, “there is always an impartial judge who does not judge theoretically, but puts his money – and that is the markets, which invest in relation to how the economy of a state is doing, and depending on what is the risk they take, something which is reflected in the amount of the interest rate at which they lend”. Here “is the huge success of Greece, which today borrows on the two-year bond at an interest rate below that of Germany and on the ten-year bond below France and Italy.” This he added, “if we told you this five years ago, you would have said to us ‘and where the heat gets tight’… And yet this is happening!”

Finally, Mr. Georgiadis, in reference to the looming wider vote by opposition parties, of the defense expenditures of the Budget, said that “I hear and learn – at least as it sounds outside – that SYRIZA will vote in favor of the defense expenditures […] If this indeed happens, I want to welcome SYRIZA on the road to maturity and indeed in a spirit of oneness in the Parliament, as I see that the MPs who are referring to Mr. Kasselaki will do the same, so the fights between you are starting to decrease and this is good for the Republic. In the event that SYRIZA does not vote for defense spending, then the old SYRIZA with which we joked will remain…”