The united opposition will ensure that everybody has access to high quality public health services if it wins the April 3 general election, representatives of the Democratic Coalition (DK), Párbeszéd and Momentum parties told an online press conference.
Zoltán Komáromi, DK’s health spokesman, accused the government of transforming public health care into pay-for services “by stealth”, and insisted that private health care was “increasingly controlled by oligarchs and beneficiaries of the system”. The next government will have the obligation to build “a decent, state-financed system available to everybody”, he said.
Párbeszéd co-leader Tímea Szabó said the “privatisation by stealth” of the health sector had started when “the social security contribution was made into a tax”. She said the principle that contributions are spent on the area they were collected for specifically should be upheld since taxes “can be spent on anything the government chooses to”. The government, she added, had in effect “built sports stadiums” using national insurance funds.
Szabó insisted that nurses’ pay was being “kept low” with a switch-over to private health care in mind. The opposition, she added, promised to hike nurses’ pay and restore the prestige of the profession.
Momentum’s Gábor Havasi said the government had “deliberately neglected” health services in the past twelve years while supporting private services, and he insisted that private health care was largely controlled by circles close to the government. Public health care, he said, was “opaque and fragmented”, and patients found it difficult to get referrals to appropriate specialists.
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