Amendment against 25-euro hospital fee tabled in Parliament

13:33 7/1/2014 - Πηγή: Matrix24

He announced a meeting within the week with members of the ruling coalition’s junior partner PASOK in order to find such measures and exempt certain classes of unemployed from the measure.

“I consider the 25-euro measure a reform, I consider it correct and defend it, but I also respect the differences with PASOK

and will talk with them,” Georgiadis said. He explained that the troika did not object to the abolition of the 25-euro fee as long as there was an increase in patient contribution to the cost of medical tests and other procedures.

In an announcement issued after the minister’s interview, the Athens Medical Association counterproposed cuts to hospital spending in order to ‘rationalise’ the health system and warned that many patients needing treatment in hospital would be deterred because they were unable to pay the admission charges.

The medical association also suggested an income-correlated fee scale and other measures to lower hospital costs – including the creation and monitoring of hygiene protocols to cut down on hospital infections that often doubled or tripled the length of hospital stays and other organisational changes. Until these proposals took effect, meanwhile, doctors stressed that the unemployed, disabled, imprisoned and those with chronic ailments should be exempted from the 25-euro admission rate.

The measure has caused friction within the ruling coalition and drawn criticism from opposition parties, with theIndependent Greeks party on Saturday tabled an amendment in Parliament for the abolition of the recently imposed 25-euro hospital admission fee charged by state hospitals since January 1. The amendment, if passed, would also scrap the one-euro fee for each social insurance prescription filled by pharmacists.

Source: AMNA