According to estimates, next year’s gap in healthcare financing could be as high as 12 billion zlotys (€2.76 billion). Poland’s left-liberal government now has a serious problem, according to Money.pl.
The website lists one of the reasons for the widening gap in fiscal costs as the rapidly growing wages in the healthcare sector.
For several years now, the so-called “Expenditure Act” has been in force, which requires an increase in healthcare spending in relation to GDP, ultimately to 7 percent. At the same time, the act on the remuneration of employees of medical professions is in force. It assumes an increase in salaries, “which means that a significant part of the money for health goes to pay rises.” That is why every year, every Polish health minister can only talk about another record in health expenditure.
“In the last two years alone, the financial consequences for the National Health Fund of implementing the act on the method of determining the lowest basic salary of certain employees employed in medical entities in the years 2022-2024 amounted to almost PLN 80 billion,” according to a source in the National Health Fund Council.
Some 90 percent of the funds that were additionally pumped into the healthcare system in the last three years went to pay increases, writes Money.pl. A source in the Polish parliament adds that with this scale of price increases, many doctors are taking fewer shifts in hospitals, “because they will earn their money anyway, but with less work.”
In the past, no one wanted to provide services under the National Health Fund. Today, when they hear that they will be provided under the National Health Fund, they just rub their hands in glee, said the source.
The situation translates into a real decline in the efficiency of the healthcare system. “As part of the summary of the first half of 2024, we know that the value of services in key areas increased by an average of approximately 20 percent. Unfortunately, this increase did not match the dynamics of the increase in the number of services and only slightly translated into an increase in the number of patients covered by care,” according to a report from a meeting of the National Health Fund Council.
“Costs are rising at a very fast pace, but this does not translate into the number of benefits, which in practice means that we are mainly paying for increased salaries,” said Łukasz Kozłowski, chief economist of the Federation of Polish Entrepreneurs.
