HealthMin Costache: Every time there is a reform in healthcare there is also this talk about privatisation

The modification of Law No. 95 on Healthcare is mainly referring to the patient being placed at the core of the system, as he/she will have the possibility to choose where to get his/her treatment from - from the state-owned or private hospitals, the Minister of Health, Victor Costache, told a press conference on Monday, underscoring once more that this is not about privatisation.

"Every time there is a reform in healthcare, there is also talk about this utopian privatisation. We want to place the patient at the core of the system and to leave the patient choose. You know the catastrophic situation we are in as a healthcare system very well and one of the causes is related to this limitation of the patient's choices. The purpose of this legislative measure is to put an end to this restriction of rights. The private hospitals have long been included in the national programmes - from 2013 or 2014. The problem was that the wording was ambiguous and it wasn't clear when exactly these accommodation capacities were exceeded, it was very ambiguous and hard to interpret. So this is a natural bringing up to date of the Law from 2014. Moreover, we also took some measures of modernisation of Law No. 95, of these integrated medical services the same as the other European countries. (...) And I'll give you the example of the children with autism, who had their medication paid up, but not the much more important support of the speech therapist or psychologist," said the Minister of Health.

The emergency ordinance draft regulates the legal framework for the provision of integrated services and related services within the national health programmes, considering that in 2020 the national programme for people with autism spectrum disorders will begin, as well as the fact that within the national health programmes, integrated services will be provided for some of these programs, which may include, as appropriate, medicines, medical services, paraclinical investigations etc.

The draft normative act also proposes that the medical services within the national healthcare programmes, which are supported by the budget of the National Health Insurance Fund, should be carried out in a unitary manner, both through public and private providers, similarly to the regulation on private providers of medicines and medical devices.

According to the initiators, through the draft normative act, the public procurement procedures will be based on the criterion of the best value for money.