Galery

1

"It is unacceptable pharmacists to continue their protests," said the Minister of Health Andreas Loverdos and announced that the government has paid part of its debt to the civil servants’ social security fund (OPAD), which owes millions to pharmacists. Loverdos stated that the payments to the pharmacists will begin tomorrow and they have no reason to continue to protest and not to give free medications to patients insured in OPAD. When the patients pay for their medications at the pharmacy they queue outside the offices of OPAD to get back their money.

So far, pharmacists had to borrow money to pay their suppliers due to the delayed payments by the OPAD, but it will no longer be necessary, the Minister stressed. He noted that the government has made a reform, the bureaucracy of which has hampered the proper functioning of the organization for ten years and made OPAD a health insurance fund, which will be funded by the state each month. "Extortion has its limits. Our responsibility as a political leadership is to overcome bureaucracy," said Loverdos.

"By the end of 2010 the OPAD was funded periodically and the delayed payments by the state resulted in debts and this lasted many years. Now, it has the status of a health insurance fund and to the 2.55% the insured employees working in the public sector pay will be added a service contribution equal to 5.1% of the salary, but also the contribution of retired will increase from 2.55% to 4% to support the organization's budget," said the Deputy Minister of Labourand Social security George Koutroumanis.

The result of the new provisions is that the government already has allocated funds to enable the organization meet its obligations to pharmacists for January and February this year. "The main priority is to pay the insurance funds on time," said Koutroumanis and added that the 2010 costs of the insurance funds including those of OPAD amounted to over 4 billion euros, and the funds were paid 93.5% of them. Now we have to pay around 30 million euros, because of which pharmacists continue not to give free medications to the civil servants insured at the organization. "Our goal for 2011 is to save 1.4 billion euros, there are results and pharmacists costs decreased by 30% in the first months of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010," said the Deputy Minister of Employment.

"OPAD was funded additionally for the first time. We allocated 100 million euros on the 23^rd of March to pay the pharmacists and 85 million euros to pay the doctors. Currently the procedure takes 15 days while it lasted two months before. The goal is to pay by the end of April the amounts due to pharmacists throughout 2010 and to pay the doctors by the end of September, so that there will be no costs at the end of the year," said the President of OPAD Kyriakos Souliotis, who also attended the joint press conference of the Minister of Health and the Deputy Minister of Labourand Social Security. There will be no deficit in OPAD for the first time at the end of this year after we have saved 300 million euros just in six months, added Souliotis.

The other news in the field of healthcare is that IKA polyclinics will only work with doctors on duty today and tomorrow, while the hospitals will take only exceptional and urgent cases tomorrow. IKA doctors are on a 48-hour strike today and tomorrow and their main demand is to renew the contracts of their colleagues who worked in IKA recently and to recruit 1400 new doctors. Hospital doctors are on strike, demanding higher wages, cancellation of hospital mergers and free examinations for all.