PM reiterates call for health fund reshuffle after summer event controversy
Prime Minister and Reform Party chairman Kristen Michal has recommended the management of the Health Fund (Tervisekassa) have a reshuffle of positions due to transparency concerns in the wake of the agency's summer day event, held at a plush hotel in South Estonia.
The prime minister noted he had made the same recommendation several years ago.
"October 2, 2018. Then it was the Health Insurance Fund (Haigekassa), today it's the Health Fund," Michal said, referring to the agency's name change.
"Same issues. Back then, the head of the fund recommended people find a new doctor using bus transport. This after incomprehensible confusion with organizing that. Now the head of the health fund, not just the sickness fund anymore (the previous term for the agency would literally translate as that – ed.), still doesn't grasp their responsibilities any better, seven years later," the prime minister wrote on his social media account.
He added a link to a 2018 article in Postimees titled "Michal recommends Health Insurance Fund management change positions."
"At that time, the leader was deemed suitable for the position despite that recommendation. If anyone asks whether in this case I would give a different recommendation, then the answer is no, the recommendation still stands," he went on.
"The Health Fund is in deficit, for many reasons unrelated to its leadership: From demographics to rising medical needs. Knowing and acknowledging also that choices in health matters are very personal to many — when one or a family member can see a doctor and what kind of treatment we as a nation can afford — then secrecy with the press on the use of such significant funds demonstrates a lack of understanding that the use of public money must be made public," noted Michal.
"That way everyone can see for themselves that our shared and scarce healthcare funds are being put to use in the best way. Right now, it doesn't look that way — due to both secrecy and the way the money is being used," he added.
The Health Insurance Fund is a public-law institution whose director is appointed and dismissed by a six-member supervisory board. Two representatives are from the government — the Minister of Social Affairs and the Minister of Finance — two represent persons insured (people with disabilities and trade unions), and two come from the Employers' Confederation (Tööandjate keskliit).
The opposition Center Party demanded on Wednesday that Reform's Minister of Social Affairs Karmen Joller resign following media reports Tuesday that the health fund's summer event at the end of July took place at the luxury Wagenküll spa hotel, housed in the Taagepera manor in Valga County. The entire facility was hired out for the event, which evening paper Õhtuleht put an estimated price tag on of potentially over €100,000.
This at a time both of calls for cuts and austerity in state agencies and elsewhere, amid a stagnant economy, tax hikes, and soaring inflation.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
