By: I. K. (Nova24TV.si)
While the repair of catastrophic floods is underway, which will apparently be paid for by taxpayers from their salaries, other issues in Slovenia have not disappeared. The healthcare catastrophe left by former Minister Danijel Bešič Loredan and perpetuated by the new “Health Minister” Robert Golob is not improving; in fact, it worsens every day. Very soon, reality will once again remind us, just like last autumn in front of healthcare centres in Ljubljana, that the current government has brought the healthcare system to the brink of collapse. Data from the Institute of Health Insurance of Slovenia indicates that the number of people without an assigned personal doctor is not decreasing but even rising! What will happen when we soon transition into the season of viral illnesses?!
Let’s remember that Slovenian healthcare has been on the brink of collapse practically throughout the term of Golob’s government and Health Minister Danijel Bešič Loredan. They seem to want to treat it with temporary solutions, while all chronic diseases causing internal financial bleeding remain untouched. Despite surviving the coronavirus pandemic under the Janša’s government with unexpected resilience – withstanding immense pressures on healthcare personnel and ensuring that nobody was left without medical care, even urgent cases were handled admirably – Slovenian healthcare was showing promise, with the first signs of recovery. However, all of this has changed with the new government. The most concerning aspect is, of course, the shortage of doctors, which worsens every month.
Healthcare on the brink of collapse
We have known for a long time that not everything is well with Slovenian healthcare, although the Janša’s government managed to address several issues despite the pandemic. However, the decline has been accelerated since the new government took office. All the competent directors of hospitals and health centres who were not causing losses were replaced along political lines. On the other hand, the “Janković-appointed” director of the Ljubljana Health Centre retained her position, and former staff accuse her of personally being responsible for the shortage of family doctors in Ljubljana, which led to long lines of patients without family doctors being seen on television.
Collapse in just one year
The results of a one-year paralysis and political manoeuvring are here. Almost no sector in healthcare remains unaffected.
People in Ljubljana, like in some third-world country, wait for urgent help because they do not have a doctor. For the highest-priority cases, 72 percent of all those waiting are waiting beyond the permissible waiting period for initial examinations – meaning people who can also die due to the delay.
Last year, nearly 6,000 referrals were accidentally deleted, and the health minister’s response was a dismissive wave of the hand and the words “it happens”. Moreover, the media reported that dozens of appointments are inexplicably deleted every month this year.
When doctors announced a strike, the former minister declared an all-out war against them and even threatened to reveal certain burdensome personal data. At that time, even the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption condemned the minister’s words [which, in a normal country, would be a reason for resignation].
Former Minister stalled the energy renovation of the University Medical Centre (UKC), which had been initiated by the Janša’s government, using this as an excuse to remove Director Golobič, whom the Prime Minister Golob himself wanted to replace (we, the taxpayers, will now have to pay for this renovation ourselves).
The telephone centre that was supposed to advise people where there are still available family doctors, of which there is a chronic shortage (announced with great pomp by the former minister), was completely unreachable for a few days. Users finally got through to an operator after half an hour of waiting, only to find out that the centre was providing outdated information (they were advising visits to family doctors who were already booked).
While the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption identified numerous corruption risks through an analysis of public procurement in hospitals, the government, at the minister’s proposal, first removed legal provisions regarding reference prices in healthcare and consequently abolished the Office for Central Price Records. This turned public procurement into the wild west it was before it had been regulated by the Janša’s government.
The number of people without doctors is increasing
As if all of this were not enough, Dnevnik reports that according to data from the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia (ZZZS), the number of people without a personal doctor or paediatrician is steeply rising. At the end of July, there were 144,500 of them, which is 12,560 more than at the beginning of the year. In other words, these are people who pay an average of 300 euros from their salaries, and now they will also be REQUIRED to pay 35 euros (previously optional) for additional health insurance, which will now be collected by the ZZZS. So, people who pour nearly half of the minimum wage into the state coffers each month end up waiting in front of healthcare centres like in some African third-world countries.
What will “minister” Golob do
Let’s remember that the acting Minister of Health is still Prime Minister Robert Golob. Amid the floods, he did not discuss healthcare much, except for empty promises that reforms are being worked on and will be presented after September (with no clear vision of the reform in sight – recall that the previous minister had promised it by the end of the year and then in the first months of 2023). Regarding other frozen reforms, Golob’s government can still conveniently use the floods as a response to why nothing is happening. However, this will be more difficult with healthcare, which is bursting at the seams, as concrete signs of dysfunction in the current healthcare policy will soon become evident. What will happen in late autumn and the early winter months, when colds, flu, and pneumonia traditionally take hold? Where will those nearly 150,000 people go who allocate nearly half of the minimum wage for healthcare and, in return, receive desperate waits outside healthcare centres in front of the overcrowded waiting rooms of on-call doctors? What will “Minister of Health” Golob do for them?
