Updated: Scicluna clarifies free health comments - BondiPlus reaction

(Adds Boniplus comments)

Labour candidate Edward Scicluna has clarified comments on the free health service made in a televised interview on Reporter a year ago, after they were featured on Bondi+ on Monday.

He said the purpose of the clip was to portray him as expressing doubts over whether Malta today could continue to provide free healthcare for everyone.

Prof Scicluna said the track record of a number of EU Member States showed that it was possible for a prudent and responsible government to provide free healthcare for all if the public health system was based on solid foundations and was run efficiently. Free healthcare was possible in a country where the government did not burden the economy with increasing public debt.

"The uncontrolled public expenditure and wastage of resources by the Nationalist government is endangering the healthcare system and its free-of-charge provision. Bearing witness to this are elderly people who end up paying for pills which they are entitled to under 'free healthcare'. So can the thousands of patients who are waiting for a cataract operation, or for a knee or hip replacement, and have been on hospital waiting lists for months or years," Prof Scicluna said.

"The system's sustainability can only be achieved if funds are not wasted through inefficiency in the healthcare system itself. The building of the Mater Dei hospital story itself and the issuing of direct orders against government rules are examples of this wastage of resources"

Prof Scicluna said his political creed had always been based on social justice, which meant that the state should not exclude any citizen from benefiting from social services such as healthcare, education, pensions and social security. Such principles made up of the concept of inclusiveness, which was one of the cornerstones of Social Europe.

He said a recent European Union study on public health expenditure in Malta showed that when compared to other Member States, Malta's system had an inefficiency rate of 40 per cent.

"This means that the same level of service being provided by the healthcare system today can be provided even if we spend 40 per cent less from our health budget. Another way of seeing it is that we could keep our expenditure as it is today while increasing the number of operations by 40 per cent.

"In the present state of affairs, I would go for the second option in the best interest of Maltese and Gozitan families. Free Healthcare for all is indeed possible."

LOU BONDI STATEMENT

Lou Bondi in a statement said that nowhere in his Reporter interview had Prof Scicluna said that he was against cutbacks in public expenditure on health. Nor had he clearly stated that it was possible for a country to have a free medical service, as was now being said.

When Prof Scicluna was asked it the country could afford a free medical service, his reply was: "I seriously doubt it. It is difficult to say that one can provide a free health service to everyone, free medicines to everyone, and all that."

While saying that those who had little income should have a right to free medical services, he added that to say that a free health service should be available to everyone, all the time, without limit, did not exist anywhere, and could not exist here.

This, Mr Bondi said, what what BondiPlus had brought out.