“Our big vision for health is to solve people’s problems so that they can do their jobs easier”, said the Minister of Health Adonis Georgiadis, in the discussion of the bill “Regulations for strengthening public health and upgrading health services”, in the relevant parliamentary committee. The bill is fundraising and in the 110 articles it includes, it regulates a series of issues concerning the operation and staffing of the National Health System (NHS), the monitoring and evaluation of pharmaceutical expenditure, the supervised bodies of the Ministry of Health, the Panhellenic Association of Physiotherapists, the Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association, as well as the Panhellenic Medical Association and in updating the operating framework of Day Care Units and private clinics.

Mr. Georgiadis therefore responded to the criticism expressed by the opposition parties, that instead of the government bringing a serious and comprehensive reform to upgrade the NHS, in the end it brings a panoply of provisions, some of which are correct but many of which are clientelistic and fragmentary.

With the bill, among other things, assistant doctors, as well as TOMY and Mental Health Unit doctors, are given the possibility to practice private work. It is also foreseen the possibility of extending the stay in the NHS, of doctors heading for retirement in 2025 and 2026, to meet pressing needs in hospitals.

Also, the possibility of operating external branches of the NHS hospitals to house outpatient clinics and Day Care Units is foreseen. According to the introductory report, “ESY hospitals are given the opportunity to establish their services in external branches, in order to manage incidents that do not require a full hospital infrastructure, with the aim of relieving the operation of nursing institutions on a daily basis and during on-call periods”.

“It is not the bill drafted by Georgiadis. We talked for a number of months with all those involved in health, each branch explained to us what their requests are, which they have been asking from the ministers of health for ten, fifteen, twenty years. We put them in a row and we have made the bill”, said the Minister of Health and noted that the regulations of this bill are “self-evident regulations”. Mr. Georgiadis was also scathing in the overall criticism of the government’s systematic discrediting of the NHS: “Do you know something? This tape being played begins to have a smaller and smaller audience every day. Because you can see very clearly that even in the polls health, as an issue, is falling and the electronic appointments we implemented are doing just fine. I have to inform the House that with 1566, 600,000 appointments have been booked, 400,000 in hospitals alone.” In 1566, added the Minister of Health, he removed the work of private companies in the four-digit numbers. “Are free hospital appointments and free appointments with EOPYY doctors a gift to individuals? Can someone from you explain it to me, in simple words so that I can understand it?”, noted Mr. Georgiadis.

“The bill comes to provide solutions to many individual issues in the field of health, making use of real data, the experience of previous interventions and of course the common mind”, said the rapporteur of the New Democracy Gina Economou. The MP, referring to the regulation that enables assistant doctors, as well as TOMY and Mental Health Unit doctors to carry out private work, said that it is an important measure that follows a similar legislative regulation by the government for the NHS doctor branches. “This is an essential incentive for qualified doctors to stay in the system, regardless of their position and the legal status of their employment. In essence, it is a financial as well as a scientific incentive for the retention within the system of the medical staff”, noted Mrs. Oikonomou.

Public health needs a long-term strategy and not piecemeal interventions, said PASOK rapporteur Ioannis Tsimaris, who found that the bill does not introduce substantial reforms but technical and administrative regulations without reform depth. The MP said that in several provisions it is the authorities themselves who evaluate their work, which undermines transparency and efficiency. At the same time, he expressed PASOK’s opposition to the extension of private work to NHS doctors, because it is a provision that intensifies inequalities and weakens the public character of health. He also cited data from ELSTAT, according to which private health expenditure in Greece reaches 39% of the total, compared to 15% in the EU, and accused the government that instead of reducing private expenditure, it shifts it to households.

“The bill contains many photographic provisions that come to vote with the sole aim of serving client letters and in general to serve purely party needs in order to finally consolidate the deep blue state,” said SYRIZA special buyer Andreas Panagiotopoulos, who accused the government of continuous discrediting of the public health system. The SYRIZA MP defended “a national health system, with full and exclusive employment and with good salaries and not a NSH that will be the anteroom of every doctor’s private practice”.

It is a bill fully aligned with the policy of strengthening the business activity of the private and public health sector, said the special buyer of the KKE Giorgos Lambroulis. The MP mentioned, among other things, that the evaluation of the hospitals and their administrations will be done on the basis of the cost-benefit ratio, on the basis of the increase in revenue and not on the basis of the full coverage of the people’s needs. Mr. Lambroulis stated his opposition to the expansion of the possibility of simultaneous employment in the private sector of the NHS doctors and denounced the generalization of the employment status, of all branches and specialties, with service certificates.

The rationalization preached by the government means, in reality, underfunding, degradation and privatization of health, said the special buyer of the Hellenic Solution Maria Athanasiou and added that the bill consists of a set of insufficient measures, which weaken the public character of the NHS, serving the government’s fixed tactics. “Bureaucracy is strengthened, party control is favored and temporary solutions are preferred, instead of creating an organized and strong public health system,” said the Hellenic Solution MP.

New Left buyer specialist Özgür Ferhat said that behind the rhetoric of upgrading and flexibility, there is an overall political direction of neoliberal deconstruction of the public character of health. “This is a bill that not only does not strengthen the National Health System, but gradually transforms it into a semi-market of services, where health ceases to be a social right and becomes a tradable good,” said the New Left MP.

The government is presenting a text as an aid to the NHS, said the special buyer of “Niki” Aspasia Kourupakis. But as he complained, what the Ministry of Health is promoting is legislation that “relaxes rules, inflates discretion and leaves accountability for later.” We do not deny the need for changes, said the “Niki” MP. We refuse to vote for regulations that create shadows where binding rules are needed. “The direction that pushes specialists to supplement incomes outside the public sector undermines the public Social Security System”, he said characteristically.

“This labyrinthine bill, with its dozens of regulations, is titled as strengthening public health, but in reality it includes piecemeal regulations and not a structured, costed and implementable plan”, said the expert buyer of Free Shipping Spyros Bibilas and noted: “This is another window regulation, which does not seriously respond to the structural inadequacies of system, which everyone admits, without denying of course that there are also some positive regulations”.