Health care reform to follow Socialist model until 2008
Hungary Around the Clock
May 23, 2006
Health care will operate in line with the Socialists’ plans until late 2007, when the Free Democrats’ preferences will take priority, according to an agreement outlined to the media on Monday by Free Democrat chairman Gábor Kuncze.
He said the ground work for converting to a competitive health insurance system will be completed by late 2007. The coalition parties will then examine whether everything is in place for introducing the Free Democrat model of several competing health insurers. The two parties have agreed to convert the National Health Insurance Fund into a shareholding company.
Kuncze said the coalition parties are working to build a system in which it will be irrelevant whether the state or private capital operates the health service. The essence, he said, is that patients will receive a higher standard of health care.
There are also plans to base health care contributions and service packages on a three-tier health insurance system. Patients will be protected against what Népszabadság calls the “jungle” of market competition by an insurance supervisory body.
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
Market competition? Several competing health insurers? Private capital? Three-tier health insurance system? Converting the National Health Insurance Fund into a shareholding company?
As Hungary surveyed the various health care models in other nations, they decided to adopt the U.S. model – the most expensive, least efficient, least equitable, and most wasteful system of all, but one that richly rewards the private insurance industry.
The lesson from Hungary is that a democracy requires an informed plebeian input. Failing that, the government could fall into the hands of individuals who cater to those with money and power, such as those who have mastered the process of diverting health care funds away from health care. That scenario is all too familiar to us in the United States.
Whose fault is this? Our citizens will never fully understand the benefits of a publicly-funded and publicly-administered insurance program until we tell them. Let’s not be part of the problem by remaining silent.