Nowhere else in the world health services became so much more expensive in such a short period, he said. However, Health Ministry Czech press survey ...
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Czech PM to attend Beijing Olympics ... spokesman Tomas Cikrt has emphatically rejected the allegation. "Rath is juggling with figures and interprets them demagogically," Cikrt said. He resolutely denied that the patients were worse off financially at present.
"The burden on the patients has not increased," Cikrt said, adding that the ministry would prepare an analysis of the situation. Referring to the Institute of Medical Information and Statistics, Rath said that for last year alone patients' additional payments for medicines grew by 22 percent, which he said was the greatest increase in the Czech Republic's history. He said the patients' cash payments in health care grew by 36 percent this year and estimated that health care for patients had become 60 percent more expensive for two years of Topolanek's cabinet's ruling. "Health care today is really starting to destroy the budget of our poor fellow citizens," Rath said. In the newspaper advertisements paid from the tax-payers' money Topolanek boasts that his cabinet ensured an additional 6.5 billion crowns for the sick. However, this money originates from regulatory health fees that the government has taken out of tax payers' pockets, Rath said. Under the present health legislation, which is part of the government's public finance reform valid since January, Czechs have to pay regulatory fees of 30, 60 and 90 crowns for a visit to a surgery and an item on prescription, for a day spent in hospital and for using the emergency medical service, respectively. Rath said that the current cabinet, on the contrary, lowered its payments for patients covered by state insurance - children, pensioners and soldiers - by eight billion crowns. "This is a lie typical of Rath," Cikrt reacted. No decrease has taken place, the payments for state patients have been only temporarily frozen, he said. On the contrary, the general flow of money to the health system is constantly growing, along with the growing GDP, Cikrt said. Topolanek is wearing borrowed plumes when he mentions half a billion crowns that will annually be allotted for doctors's training as of 2009, Rath said. Rath who is also chairman of the Chamber of Deputies health committee, says that it was his proposal that he submitted as a committee meeting because the Health Ministry did not consider allotting any money for the improvement of doctors' training. "Prime Minister Topolanek is either playing a joke on people or clearly deceiving them," Rath says. "This is outrageous," Cikrt said, commenting on Rath's statement. The whole system of doctors' further education was changed at the Health Ministry's proposal, he said. "I know that the elections are approaching but this is not a reason for such big lies," he said. ($1=16.784 Czech crowns)
(Ceske Noviny)
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