The Health Committee, chaired by MK Yonatan Mashriki (Shas), convened on Tuesday to discuss the intention to cancel the budgetary increase, in the amount of NIS 100 million, for the healthcare services basket. Committee Chair MK Mashriki called to retain the budgetary increase in full, to find a budgetary source for doing so outside the Ministry of Health budget, and to institute a fixed percentage of increase to the basket. MK Mashriki noted the “struggle of the chairman of the Shas movement, Rabbi MK Aryeh Deri (Shas), who fought to raise the Ministry of Health budget and demanded an increase of billions of shekels within the coalition agreements for the benefit of reducing healthcare disparities between the periphery and central Israel.”
MK Tatiana Mazarsky (Yesh Atid), who initiated the debate, said, “This measure will lead to grave ramifications for the wellbeing and health of hundreds of thousands of patients in Israel. There is a real and growing need to increase the budget, not to reduce it. The planned cutback will leave many patients without access to treatments and medications that can sometimes be life saving. Every cutback to the budget of the healthcare services basket is a death sentence for many patients. Given the mounting medical needs, and the soaring prices of innovative medications, and in a reality in which the public’s healthcare situation has worsened since the outbreak of the war—the need to enlarge the healthcare services basket is the order of the day.”
Representatives of the Knesset Research and Information Center explained that the constant development of technologies in the healthcare field required the updating of the healthcare services basket, but said that no mechanism had been set by law for expanding the basket and for the inclusion of new medications and technologies. However, following public protest, since 1998, every year (with the exception of 2003), an annual budget has been allocated for expansion of the healthcare services basket. This allocation is known as a technological update, and in 2003 it amounted to NIS 650 million, versus NIS 500 million in each of the years 2021–2023. At present, a NIS 100 million cutback is being requested, and [it is planned] to return the update to NIS 500 million.
Dr. Zeev Feldman, Chair of the Organization of the state-Employed Physicians of Israel (ARAM), said, “The uncertainty with regard to the size of the healthcare services and technologies basket causes great concern among patients, since this is a death sentence for some of them. It also harms the physicians and medical teams, who don’t have all the tools to do what they have sworn to do—to cure and save lives. A fixed annual increase of 1.5% should be ensured to the healthcare services and technologies basket.”
Noa Gottlieb of the Ministry of Finance Budgets Department replied that the cutback was dependent on a Government resolution.
Related Topics
