By: Peter Jančič
Prime Minister Robert Golob and the ruling parties plan to address long waiting times and the lack of funding for healthcare by banning doctors from working additional jobs. According to their assessment, doctors spend their mornings idly in public hospitals, while in the afternoon they unjustly earn money in private practices and redirect struggling patients to private companies. This was revealed this week.
I can describe the state of entrepreneurship in healthcare, which the government is now shutting down, based on a recent personal experience. It involved a skin lesion that could have been cancerous. Even though I pay for public healthcare, for my birthday, I received a paid private procedure for a top surgeon who also works in public healthcare. This was with Uroš Ahčan. He has just released a book, which is worth paying attention to. Writing books is also a private business. Especially dangerous for those in power. It is unclear whether the government will also prohibit doctors from doing this. Instead of working in public healthcare, they are writing books and earning extra privately!
The procedure was performed excellently. Without any lengthy waiting. Immediately. And I even had the privilege of talking to him while he was cutting. Even about the book. That alone was worth the entire cost of the service. The alternative would have been to first try to find my personal doctor, whom they had closed several times in Ljubljana, one of them together with the entire health centre in Nove Jarše. Zoran Janković closed the health centre, and we were informed that it would be demolished, and a new building and health centre would be constructed within two years. That is what they said. Five years have passed since then, and the building is still standing. Empty. They still have not demolished anything. The pharmacy inside is doing well all the time. It is profitable for the city. A good business. The health centre is a cost. A bad business.
Since I have lost several personal doctors, I now have one somewhere far outside Ljubljana. In the capital, they have run out of doctors for me. With a referral, if I could find this last personal doctor, whom I have not met personally, they would probably have removed the formation in the state health system at some point. But we all know that it would not be quick. If it were skin cancer and not just an unusual mole, it would be bad. I was happy to quickly resolve the risk. Even more so, I was relieved that I did not have to make an appointment in the state health system and wait in lines. Late in the evening at Ahčan’s near the railway station in Ljubljana, I only met women who care more about their bodies than men. If they want to, while still young, they must go to private practitioners.
The idea of our authorities to prohibit Ahčan from additional work will have predictable consequences. A brilliant surgeon will only work privately, and the state health system will lose knowledge and experience. Waiting times will be even longer. And if it concerns a skin lesion that behaves unusually, this time means that you might be dead.
We must fear the latest attempt by our government. They are known for wrong assessments and amateurish fiascos. We know how it ended with the ten thousand laptops still in Logatec, the dream building that judges do not want, Svetlana Makarovič’s award for leftist activism, or the best candidate for European Commissioner, Tomaž Vesel. They say one thing, something else happens, and everyone else is blamed for the failure except for them.
Regarding healthcare, they have so far nationalised voluntary supplementary insurance with hundreds of millions in costs, introduced during Janez Drnovšek’s government due to the lack of money for healthcare, since they could not increase the compulsory contribution to avoid hitting businesses. They tried to offer people a little more with voluntary supplementary insurance. Above standard. Which eventually failed. Because they ran out of money even for the ordinary standard. Now they do not care about the fate of businesses, taxes and contributions are rising, and there is even less money for below-standard care. Many sick people cannot access healthcare and dental services they paid for to the state. Often, the only solution is private practitioners. And paying again for what they have already paid to the state.
The authorities are playing dumb. And fighting against privatisation. Where we pay again for what has already been paid.
The authorities intend to strike at the diligent, not the cleverest and most enterprising, like the star health minister Danijel Bešič Loredan, who was supposed to carry out healthcare reform, but it ended with him being dismissed and no reform in sight. Bešič Loredan, as a minister, had government permission for additional work in his private healthcare institution in Primorska, which received business from the state healthcare system, and at the same time worked at a private clinic in Ljubljana. He was a top-notch amphibian, about whom the ruling class screams that they are the cause of all problems, as they spend their mornings staring into space at the government building and only redirect business to their private ventures in the afternoons.
But Bešič Loredan is not the highest symbol of such state entrepreneurship. The highest is our Prime Minister Robert Golob. As the director of the state monopoly electricity reseller from the nuclear power plant GEN-I, where he was compensated far beyond the limits of the law prohibiting excessive extraction of state money for politically appointed directors, he simultaneously created his private company Star Solar, which sells electricity from solar panels on buildings, which are also state-owned. The private profits were and still are Robert Golob’s.
Star Solar has, as he separates from his ex-wife, as a prime minister even more in his ownership than he had as the director of GEN-I. Now completely. Nothing is hidden with his ex-wife anymore. From this additional work of his, we have not benefited as we do from doctors’ additional work. On the contrary: we only paid him private profits with state subsidies for solar energy production.
From the perspective of state finances, the fight against doctors will be beneficial for the ruling class. They will save additional funds on your account for laptops in warehouses, various buildings, payments to cultural, non-governmental, and media propagandists, and for all the sweetness of state energy. Due to even longer waiting times, as there will be fewer doctors in the state healthcare system, even more people will have to pay private practitioners. State healthcare costs will be lower, but yours will be higher.
Of course, only those who can, will pay extra. Others will suffer and die if they have no connections and acquaintances.
Even though they have already paid the state for healthcare and dental care. In fact, they have paid twice.
And doctors are not to blame for this. Someone else governs.