The project should be ready this year and has been initiated by the Presidential Commission for the Analysis and Drawing up of Public Health Policies, which will submit it to the Health Ministry.
“The law draft must generate as few changes as possible, so that it can come into effect quickly,” says Virgil Paunescu, president adviser with the health department.
Nevertheless, the new law, inspired by the Dutch model, will mark a sweeping change of a system that is far from working. The most important change is probably the competition it will generate between health insurance houses, once private ones emerge.
Paunescu says that EUR200 go on average to the National Health Insurance House (CNAS) per taxpayer, and private houses will ask for this money for the persons they will insure.
At this very moment, added Paunescu, the Health Ministry together with the World Bank “are trying to see what can be offered for EUR200, so that we will have a control”.
How will hospitals be organized in the new system? “We want to turn them into foundations or into companies,” said Paunescu. The law will also revise malpractice legislation, “which has been causing headaches” for almost ten years.
The proposals for the new law are based on a 2008 report by the Presidential Commission, which has been discussed with all actors in healthcare: trade unions, employers’ associations, professional associations, companies. Then, in the autumn of 2010, Sanitas Federation proposed the document should be a starting point for a more extensive project.
Carmen Marcu, the head of Targoviste county hospital, believes several private health houses should be beneficial for the system, but only on condition that the money raised in the Health account should no longer be transferred through the Finance Ministry. As regards the possibility of privatizing hospitals, she says this is a useless measure.
On the other hand, Theodor Alexandrescu, general manager of insurer Alico, believes hospital privatization is a good idea as only private management can be competitive.
Businessman Mihai Miron, who owns Ropharma, a company operating in drug retail and distribution, says the package has been awaited for long and should it be completed, the health ministry would have an extraordinary evolution in the following year.
However, Mihai Marcu, president of private healthcare operator MedLife, is skeptical about such projects. “Defining the basic package and co-payment would be an ambitious objective for the next two years,” he said.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)