– The National Health Fund’s budget is short by 14 billion PLN this year, and Minister Domański is indulging his political emotions. The minister herself, instead of addressing patients’ problems, now claims that 30% of hospitals are redundant. This is ignorance and disregard for patients on the part of this government – stated Law and Justice (PiS) MP Katarzyna Sójka.
A crisis in healthcare. “Ignorance and disregard for patients”
Law and Justice MPs held a press conference devoted to the dramatic situation in Poland’s healthcare system.
“Today we hear that oncology patients are being denied admission, diagnosis, or treatment. Patients are waiting in queues for months. They are waiting in oncology, cardiology, and pulmonology queues. The hospital in Górno has limited admissions of tuberculosis patients. This is a collapse. The National Health Fund’s budget is short by 14 billion PLN this year, and Minister Domański is pursuing his political emotions,” said Katarzyna Sójka.
She then addressed the December 13 Coalition government with the words: “Focus on the patients.”
“The minister herself, instead of responding to patients’ problems, says today that 30% of hospitals are redundant. Yet even in those so-called redundant hospitals, patients are standing in queues. This is ignorance and disregard for patients by this government. We do not want hospitals to be privatized or shut down,” she emphasized.
MP Michał Moskal pointed out that “someone in the Ministry of Health building decided that oncology patients have plenty of time – their cases can be postponed for two years, programs concerning them can be suspended, and we can just wait.”
“These people bear responsibility for the patients who have been waiting for solutions that would be possible through the Medical Fund. We can also see what is happening with overdue payments and how hospital debts are deepening. Halting hospital investments is reprehensible,” he assessed.
He added that “because of these political games organized by Donald Tusk, it’s the patients who will suffer.”
“We are wasting the time of people who have no time to lose. We appeal to this government to finally get to work,” he concluded.