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– Health Minister Bent Høie and the Conservative Party must answer how much privatization the public health service can support. Where is the border for conservatives? asks Labor Party health policy spokesperson Ingvild Kjerkol.
The Labor Party today launches a draft of a new party program. The profile sharpens in a number of areas, including climate policy, which Dagbladet discussed yesterday.
But the Labor Party also points to a clearer ideological direction. Støre has led the work of the program and already announced this summer that the Labor Party will eliminate market thinking in the public sector.
As early as 2001, the Labor Party under Health Minister Tore Tønne introduced free choice of hospital, and since 2003 patients could also choose between private and non-profit hospitals rather than public hospitals. But only as long as the ideal and the private had an agreement with the public.
In 2015, however, Health Minister Bent Høie (H) introduced an extension of the scheme. You can now everybody Private and non-profit actors treat patients who are referred to the specialized health service only if they are approved by Helfo, without agreement with the hospitals.
– The privatization of Bent Høie creates a market for private therapists. We have been pragmatic about this and have had a long history of using private and non-profit actors that have a direct agreement with hospitals. But now private actors only need to be approved. If they manage to attract patients, almost as clients, they get paid and the money comes directly from the local hospital the patient belongs to, Kjerkol explains.
Oil dissent in Ap
Stop “sneaky”
Kjerkol is very upset with Bent Høie, whom she thinks she is confusing when she talks about what Kjerkol thinks should be called “the right of free establishment for the private”, not “free choice of treatment”.
– Bent Høie has been ‘cunning’. Now he calls everyone free choice of treatment, which is why the confusion is so great. We have had free choice of hospital since 2001, but free choice of treatment is a privatization reform that occurred in 2015. I think it is a deliberate fog of Høie, says Kjerkol.
Health Minister Høie shakes his head when he hears the accusations from the Labor Party. He believes that the reform he introduced has made things easier for patients.
– The right does not tarnish. We have ensured that patients who want to use their freedom of choice have a door of entry. There should be no difference in procedure when patients choose whether they want to go to another public hospital, a private hospital with an agreement with the public sector, or a free choice treatment provider. But for the Labor Party, which is more concerned with the system than the patient, it may not seem entirely logical, Høie says.
One billion in 2030
New private players who attract patients from the public health service receive automatic payment for treatment. The money is taken from the local hospital where the patient belongs.
In 2016, NOK 60 million moved from the public health service to new private players with the approval of Helfo. Last year, this number had risen to nearly 300 million.
If growth continues at the same rate, the private sector will extract one billion from the public health service by 2030.
Therefore, Kjerkol also asks where the line goes for the right and the right.
– This challenges the clear goals and commitment of the Labor Party to equitable health care across the country. The resources are drawn from the public service and directed to private actors who are established where most people live, in central eastern Norway, says Kjerkol, who promises to reverse the reform if the Labor Party takes office within a year .
Ask Frp to keep his fingers off the plate.
– We will remove this scheme. To the extent that non-profit organizations and individuals are used, there will be collaboration agreements with the public sector. Then the treatment is integrated with public hospitals. Then you have control over the resources and it is the medical needs that determine the treatment. It will be as it was with the free choice of the hospital, says Kjerkol.
Alto: “Example of terror”
Bent Høie believes that the costs of free choice of treatment and billions. The Labor Party believes that the plan will cost in 2030, on the contrary, it is a savings for the public sector.
– The cost is less than the Labor Party alternative. So this graph should be based on the fact that the Labor Party intends to deny treatment to these patients, says Høie, who dramatizes the Labor Party’s projection.
If the Labor Party “terror scenario” hits, and one billion is spent treating patients through free choice of treatment in 2030, it is still significantly less than the 5.2 billion crowns that Labor City Council in Oslo paid individuals for medical care. and care tasks last year, says Høie.
Kjerkol believes that Høie does not answer the question.
– When Høie says that the free choice of treatment does not cost, it is because the money is taken from public hospitals. Of course, we will not deprive any patient of the right to treatment. Høie must stop with this straw man, says the leader of the Labor Party.
