FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The life ordeal faced by the well-known actor Genc Fuga and his family's inability to financially cope with vital medical treatment has rightly caused great public outrage. Albanians feel betrayed by the national health system, which is financed through their taxes and contributions, but abandons them in the clutches of death when they need it.
Public pressure on this issue can only be positive. But a part of the actors and the media seems to be using the debate not to really solve the problem, but to advance their personal agendas, behind which there are probably malicious intentions.
The stupidity sometimes reaches the point that the main concern is not why public hospitals cannot provide vital services, but why these services are provided by private ones. This is perversion.
Saving lives is not a crime. If these services were not offered in private hospital structures, all those patients who have faced cerebral ischemia today would no longer exist. Therefore, the fact that the treatment of this dangerous disease is offered in private hospitals is not a curse, but a public good.
The fact that private hospitals charge money to provide medical services is not a crime, nor does it make them immoral. The hotel does the same when a citizen goes to sleep or a restaurant when someone goes to have lunch.
So, that famous motto "pay or die", with which private hospitals are attacked, can be used very well for bakeries that produce bread, companies that sell water and so on for all businesses that offer vital products or services. But we don't attack bakeries or companies that sell water.
However, in the case of the health system, there is a major problem. And that is the funding scheme. Albania has built a financing model of the health system, which does not finance the patient or the doctor, but tenders and corruption.
A country that has chosen to have a two-pillar health system must finance the patient. The money that the health insurance fund receives from citizens through contributions must be returned to them. And it is the citizen who decides where he will receive the service, in public or private hospitals.
If the health system is to enter the market, the pension fund must be neutral vis-à-vis market actors. It funds the patient according to standard cost packages and not the service provider. Thus, hospitals will compete with each other to provide the best quality service and the lowest price.
This is the model that the vast majority of Western countries use today and for a free market this is the best way. Of course there is another way. It is that of a national health system with only one column, i.e. only with public hospitals. In the end it is a matter of choice. But life is too expensive to leave it in the hands of Ogerta's tenders and Rilindja's "free" healthcare./Oligarkia.al
Lini një Përgjigje