BY BLANKA ZÖLDI
BUDAPEST BEACON: Hungary’s hidden state debt: Unpaid doctors, suppliers, service providers
“Many hospitals are not able to pay for bandages, equipment, medical supplies and even electricity. In some cases hospitals have been threatened with having their electricity and gas cut off, and it has become commonplace for healthcare companies to only deliver those medical supplies for which the hospital has paid up front.”
The day-to-day functioning of Hungary’s hospitals is in danger and many public institutions are regularly receiving final late payment notices from electricity and other utilities suppliers, a leading health care official told the Budapest Beacon. Meanwhile doctors and other public servants often go unpaid for months.
“They give us money but only in a fire-fighting manner, ” Hungarian Medical Chamber president István Éger says.
“The impact on patients is that we have waiting lists 50,000-people long, even for cancer tests on which lives might depend,” according to Éger.
“Many hospitals are not able to pay for bandages, equipment, medical supplies and even electricity. In some cases hospitals have been threatened with having their electricity and gas cut off, and it has become commonplace for healthcare companies to only deliver those medical supplies for which the hospital has paid up front,” Éger adds.
Hungary’s hospitals now owe over HUF 65 billion, while many universities, child care facilities, museums, libraries and courts are also running on empty. Hungary’s state budgetary institutions owe almost HUF 100 billion, HUF 82,8 billion in unpaid bills, and this overall debt climbed by HUF 2.5 billion in June.
Official data shows that the most heavily indebted state funded bodies are those overseen by the Ministry of National Resources, which owe HUF 76.6 billion, or 77% of the total. The biggest debtor is still the Science University of Pécs, with HUF 5.1 billion (which rose by HUF 250 million in June), and Semmelweis University, with unpaid bills of HUF 3.7 billion. The Péterfy Sándor Hospital owes more than HUF 3 billion, after a HUF 100 million increase in June. Meanwhile Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County Hospital and Education Center of has debts of HUF 2.8 billion, and the Gottsegen György National Cardiology Institute owes HUF 1.5 billion. A complete list of all the indebted state funded bodies published by the Hungarian State Treasury can be downloaded here.
Éger says “the state owes a sum that is called and quantified as ‘the debt of the state funded bodies’. However there is another amount on which the state remains shyly silent: they are buying our doctors’ and medical workers’ labor as if we were in Ethiopia. And they do it without any kind of remorse, despite the fact that they should also be responsible for this ‘debt’.
According to Éger health care sector public debt is rising every year because the state pays less hospitals than they are officially entitled. “The state simply does not respect the basic concepts of economy. Constantly and shamelessly it only partly reimburses our costs. What’s more, it would be a basic expectation to have amortization costs included in the cost of our medical supplies so we can adequately replace used medical equipment.”
In an attempt to put a bandaid over the crisis, state secretary for parliamentary affairs Bence Rétvári announced a hospital support package of HUF 14 billion in order to ease the burden of the high debt. This surprised industry observers, due to the comment last month of Public Finances Minister Péter Benő Banai that it is useless to devote “further resources for consolidation into the system until no substantive changes are made”.
Éger is more optimistic regarding the new minister of state for health Gábor Zombor, calling him “promising” and open to discussion. “In his first month we have met several times to negotiate. He wanted to learn in detail about the sector’s problems. He does not have the keys to the treasury, but he can help us fight for resources,” Éger adds.
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