Expenditure on Health: the BE want that the Government “turn back” and give more funding to the NHS – Diário de Notícias – Lisbon

the Ministry has banned investment expenditure without the permission of the guardianship. BE want to that executive save on rents to private

The Left Block is against the order of the secretary of State for Health, Manuel Delgado, signed on the 28th of September, that requires all hospitals of the National Health Service (NHS) before taking up any financial commitment, to seek authorization from the guardianship for all investments, including the spare.

For the bloquistas – who submitted yesterday a request in the Assembly of the Republic with questions to the Ministry of Health, that the DN had access, this situation can lead to delay, additional and excessive in the acquisition of products, material and equipment and incapacitates the health units to respond quickly and effectively to moments or exceptional situations”. And, in a sentence, another note as well policy in the disagreement of the guidelines: “we do not agree with this decision because we can’t condition the functioning of the SNS, subalternizando to the deficit.”

For the parliamentary group of the Left Bloc, which supports the socialist Government in Parliament – there is only one path, formulated in the first question made to the Ministry of Health: “the Government Intends to backtrack on the publication of the order 143/2016, recognizing the possible negative impacts that it can have on the functioning of the health units?”

On the other hand, mr Moses Ferreira (who signs the questions by BE), it argues for the need to “free up” resources to “invest” in the National Health Service (NHS). This “gradual reinforcement of the NHS” will not “put pressure on their budget execution: there is no more budget for the Health and there are to be significant savings and courageous in the true rents that are paid to private parties and divert resources of the NHS”.

According to the BE, “public-private partnerships (PPP) in the area of health consume 450 million euros per year, feature the private to the implementation of additional examinations and diagnostic the most common (excluding here the hemodialysis) cost in 2015 (almost € 400 million to the health budget; the recourse to temporary employment undertakings, costing about 100 million euros per year and the non-use of the surgical capacity of the NHS represented in 2015 with a bill of almost € 40 million.

Is the message given, the 15 days of the delivery of the State Budget for 2017. “We are not ignorant that other measures can be taken in order to improve the organization and operation of the system, but let’s face it: a fundamental step is to ensure that the public budget for health is applied in the public health system.”

the Government wants to prevent slippage

The Government came however to argue that the order has only one purpose: to avoid slippage the budget until the end of the year, secured the Ministry of Health to the agency Lusa.

they Are themselves responsible who admit that the authorizations to ask for guardianship may involve a bureaucracy that can delay hospital procedures. The secretary of State for Health, Manuel Delgado, who signed the order, explained to Lusa that the that the guardianship wants is “to know if the investments are justified when exceed the stipulated in the contract program.”

And he added: “we Want to ask the hospitals to maintain expenditure levels in line with the monthly average, with the cumulative to August this year. We don’t want to speed up the expenditure and derrapem in spending at the end of the year. We don’t want the expense shoot making the budget of the Ministry of Health highly loss-making as it happened in the past year, in which the projection was 30 million euros” and ended up “250 million euros”. The order runs until the end of the year. From January is reset to the previous situation.