Doctors continue the occupation of the Health Ministry as they want the government bill to be withdrawn. The main problem according to them and what they fear is that the bill is possible to be applied in theory but it is not clear how the reforms will be implemented in practice. Moreover, doctors’ unions are numerous and their representatives have offered to make a forum for everyone to share their proposals and a common platform to be agreed upon.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Andreas Loverdos said at a press conference that as of tomorrow the doctors serving patients health insured as civil servants or freelancers would serve the patients insured at IKA. That was the response of the Ministries of Health and Employment to the strikes of polyclinic doctors who are on a four-day strike.
Minister Loverdos and Deputy Minister George Koutroumanis announced that a ministerial decision was being prepared as well as addendum to the bill. The patients insured at IKA will have access to health centers and consulting rooms not within the National health system which, anyway, was in force before. As the Ministers announced, the regulations would apply until the national health care service started to operate.
IKA’s health staff union announced a 24-hour strike across Greece on Friday and there will be a demonstration outside the Ministry of Health at 9.30 am today. According to the doctors, if provisions for the primary health care system come into force the patients will have to wait longer to be examined.
Around 50 representatives of doctors' unions remained in the Health Ministry last night and they discussed the occupation of the building to continue. The doctors at the polyclinics of the Health Insurance Fund IKA are on strike until the end of this week. Hospital doctors also were on a 24-hour strike on Wednesday. It is expected the bill on health care to be passed next week. Hospital doctors decided to go on a 48-hour strike the days in which it enters the Parliament. Bus drivers in Athens who are also on strike came to the Ministry in the morning to express their solidarity with the doctors.
The main demands of the representatives of the doctors’ communist organization is the fee of five euros for consulting rooms external to the hospitals to be cancelled and the IKA’s 1400 doctors who had labour contracts and were subsequently fired to be appointed again. Representative of the medical union Imatia from Beriah supported the protest of the doctors in the field. He said the bill was unconstitutional, no specific solutions were formulated and 66 additional ministerial decrees were provided.
The president of the Greek federation of private health care unions Leonidas Anaganostou proposed the establishment of a health forum to engage all members of medical associations. He added that the forum could discuss in detail issues that divided the various unions in order to reach to an agreement and to propose a common solution concerning the organization of the health care system. Mr. Anagnostou noted that health funds had not paid private laboratory technicians between 7-8 months in the best case and up to two years in the most striking cases. "We must go to jail because we do not have money to pay the tax on amounts we were not paid?!" asked the president of the federation of private doctors.
A microbiologist told that one of the health insurance funds had not paid her two years. She said she could not contact the office by phone. When she went there it turned out that all employees who could serve her were on vacation. There was a quarrel with one of the employees. Her colleagues rushed to defend her and the doctor-microbiologist found herself locked in the warehouse of the office. The employees had threatened her that they would call the police to arrest her.
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