Marathon talks on Health Scheme

By Athena Karsera

HEALTH Ministry and other government officials yesterday briefed the House Health Committee on the proposed new National Health Scheme during a marathon nine-hour meeting.

Speaking afterwards, Diko deputy and Committee member Dr Marios Matsakis told The Sunday Mailthat the day’s meeting had been “constructive”, and said it and would be the first in a series on the issue.

“We (the Health Committee) asked a lot of questions,” Matsakis said, adding that further meetings would “probably go into great depth in certain aspects of the scheme, not stay limited to the government side”.

Matsakis said that similar meetings were also planned with unions and doctors’ associations as well as with other parties affected by the proposed Health Scheme.

He believed a new Health Scheme was very necessary for Cyprus, and his personal opinion was that the law should be passed “as soon as possible” – hopefully before the end of the year.

He also noted that the Scheme was almost ready and that the Committee was currently in the process of ironing out details.

The Cabinet in January decided to forge ahead with the new system, despite opposition from the public servants’ union Pasydy.

Non-Pasydy government doctors, meanwhile, are in favour of the Health Scheme, as are private physicians.

The new National Health Scheme, first proposed more than six years ago, would involve employers and workers contributing about half of the cost for a free health plan that would include treatment from private doctors as well as at state hospitals.

Health Minister Christos Solomis said in February that he expected the bill for the new Health Scheme to be approved within “a year to 18 months”, and that a further five years would be needed to phase it in.

In January, Solomis said that the cost of the new system’s first stage of implementation would be approximately £187 million, or nine per cent of the gross national wage bill.

The government wants employers to contribute 2.55 per cent and employees 2 per cent. Unions want employee contributions to be set at the 1.5 per cent mark.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.