A healthy debate

Zbigniew Religa,

Minister of Health

On indebted hospitals: The hospitals need to prove that they can break even. Helping those which are doing nothing is a waste of money. We will demand that the hospitals show that they are needed and do not fall further into debt. The best solution would be creating some kind of financial mechanism that would give the hospitals a chance to pay back their debts.

On the reform of the health-care system: I will be telling people the truth - for the premiums that you are paying you can only get a limited number of services. For services outside the guaranteed ones you have to find your own way of financing.

Xenia Kruszewska,

director of the insurance department at Signal Iduna Polska

The public healthcare system needs to redefine itself and tell us how much room there is for the alternative-insurance market. But now we are outside of the public-insurance sector. People pay private [health] insurance because they don't want to wait in queues and they want quality service.

Adam Rozwadowski,

general director of Enel-Med

On public-private partnerships: I see a chance of putting into the budget funds that the state invests in modern technologies. Private health centers rent an area in a hospital and set up their modern equipment there - this relieves the budget and these funds could be saved. The private sector can afford to undertake such investments. This cooperation could stop the buying of expensive equipment in hospitals that do not use it. There could be more money [spent on] direct treatment instead of [on] equipment. The more economy there is in health care, the better the treatment.

Jerzy Miller,

president of the National Health Fund (NFZ)

On the healthcare system: The image of the healthcare sector that is presented to us is one of it being chased by the repo man. Meanwhile, 34 percent of hospitals made profits in 2005. The number of services grew by 13.5 percent, the spendings on public health care increased by 10 percent - what other public sector had such an increase of income? The situation does not look bad in the macro scale, and in the micro scale, I highly value the development of hospital management staff.

On hospital debt: Indebted hospitals are the fly in the ointment of the health system. Some of them will probably need to be restructured. In the case of others, we will have to make some arrangement because their disappearance will result in a lack of access to health care in certain regions.

Quotes compiled by Michał Pakulniewicz