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The Day Budapest Burns To Cinder (or not) | 25 comments (25 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: The Day Budapest Burns To Cinder (or not) (4.00 / 2)
Any good resources to explain the "reforms" they eventually decided on for the healthcare system?
by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Thu Mar 15th, 2007 at 07:39:05 AM EST
Re: The Day Budapest Burns To Cinder (or not) (none / 1)
Ah, shucks. I once promised you to write on this. I'll try to do so this weekend when I have time (hopefully tomorrow, but nothing is certain).

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Thu Mar 15th, 2007 at 04:56:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The Day Budapest Burns To Cinder (or not) (none / 1)
Links are fine, I know what it is like to be busy, although non-Hungarian languages are preferred... ;-)
by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Thu Mar 15th, 2007 at 06:54:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The Day Budapest Burns To Cinder (or not) (none / 1)
I haven't found such links... so here is a quick write-up.

As I tried to imply, the move to a multi-insurer system is not yet one with concrete proposals. The actual plans are kept from the public like top secret military plans, now they just do advocacy and 'prepare the ground' with other changes.

What was hammered through so far:

  1. introduction of a fee for visiting a doctor, as well as staying in a hospital (but with children and poor adults exempted), with the expressed intent to reduce visits and medicine prescriptions, but 'sold' with loud rhetoric about ending the practice of giving gratitude money (which is bullshit -- on one hand, I personally have never paid gratitude money so it's not quasi-compulsory as they claim; on the other hand, people will aways try to get special treatment and get jumped ahead in the waiting line with some black money);
  2. closures of some hospitals, the institutional merging of others, in particular the hospitals attached to various state companies and bureaucracies are to be separated from them (they are some of the best -- thus some of the most sellable...);
  3. selling medicines outside pharmacies;
  4. organising a tracking of who really pays social security insurance, and require money from those who don't (which is crual: many of these people lost their jobs or have bosses who play tricks with the State);
  5. they created a new (public) oversight body over the (as yet public) social security insurer, one that is supposed to act for customers against misbehavior of the insurer; this oversight body is the first element for a future multi-insurer system.

As for what was leaked/hypothetised so far regarding the plan for a multi-insurer system: it will probably be of a mixed system, in which the public social security insurer continues to exist and finances emergency, pregnant-treating and other critical services, and the state also continues to collect the money; while the private insurers divide up the health care system among themselves (each having its own network), and everyone has to choose one.

I'd say it's madness, complete and criminal madness, every single element of this policy mess.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Fri Mar 16th, 2007 at 01:48:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The Day Budapest Burns To Cinder (or not) (4.00 / 2)
personally have never paid gratitude money so it's not quasi-compulsory as they claim; on the other hand, people will aways try to get special treatment and get jumped ahead in the waiting line with some black money);

In Poland it's a lottery for procedures that are neither simple basic care nor absolutely urgent, though even with the latter you might get unlucky (most doctors won't blackmail you when your life is at stake, but a few will, and there intermittent shortages of medicines and equipment in the state sector which are always available in the private one). If, say, you've injured your knee and can't work, you might get lucky and get surgery relatively fast. Or, more often, you'll be told there's no availability for, say, a year. However, you might want to try that private clinic, I hear it's really good. There they'll examine you (for a hefty fee) and either do the surgery themselves or refer you back to the state hospital where the same surgeon who said there's no availability for a year will take you outside his or her normal working hours. Doctor's salaries are crap - on an hourly basis far below the median, so they work ridiculous hours, shaving off from their state sector jobs for private work. Plus you're getting shortages in some areas as doctors and nurses move to the west - shorter hours, far more money.

by MarekNYC on Fri Mar 16th, 2007 at 02:47:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: The Day Budapest Burns To Cinder (or not) (none / 1)
...and thus one gets the worst of both worlds.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Sat Mar 17th, 2007 at 02:44:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The Day Budapest Burns To Cinder (or not) | 25 comments (25 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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