Health Fund financial time bomb set back for at least a few years

The government yesterday decided that the health funds will receive two additional years to pay back the loans they received from the budget in 2000. Last week, the former health minister Mariusz Lapinski, had promised the unionists to turn to the government with a request to write-off these debts. The Prime Minster declared this was beyond the ministers competency and sacked him. It turned out that the Cabinet, with the new Health Minister Marek Balicki, quickly found a solution to the problem. "The health system has to maintain liquidity. The government has acknowledged that it is crucial to prepare an amendment to the law, which will extend the pay-back period until the end of 2007," Balicki said. This year, instead of the planned zl. 410 million, the budget will only receive zl. 100 million from from the debt payments. (Rzeczpospolita, p. A3) A.K.