Hungary’s unified health-care system has proven to be an advantage in a crisis, Gergely Gulyás, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office, said in an interview to public broadcaster Kossuth Rádió. The unified health inventory management under the hospital command system has also proven beneficial, he said.
In addition, Gulyás highlighted the necessity of cross-ministerial coordination, saying the operative board had provided the right framework accordingly. Gulyás said wages in health care had risen far higher than for other jobs over the past nine years. “Still, we lag behind western Europe, so further increases are needed,” he said. The chamber of doctors, he noted, has recommended further wage increases combined with a crackdown on gratuities.
Regarding opposition criticisms of the government’s emergency powers and the subsequent medical preparedness measures, Gulyás accused the opposition of lying about the emergency powers that have since been revoked. He said the opposition then peddled an even greater lie concerning the new law on epidemiological measures. Until there’s a vaccine against the virus, it’s in everyone’s common interest to be prepared, he added.
On the topic of municipal politics in Budapest, Gulyas said István Tarlós, the current mayor Gergely Karácsony’s predecessor, had left the Budapest municipality with 40 billion forints of cash in its coffers and 160 billion forints of government bonds. Now it holds 180 billion in government bonds, “so it would be hard to say that its liabilities exceed its expenditures.”
MTI
