Malta’s spending on health per inhabitant was well below the EU average according to comparisons made by Eurostat.
Free health care should not mean patients having to resort to private clinics
Labour MP Marie Louise Coleiro Preca said yesterday that the survey had concluded that private health services were among the most expensive in the EU. Outpatients services, too, were below the EU average, as was the total expenditure on health .
Ms Coleiro Preca said an EC report on efficiency in public expenditure on health and education showed that Malta was spending more for the same results as achieved by countries that spent less.
Around half of the expenditure was earmarked for wages and salaries, with an increase of more than €15 million for 2012. Was the increase going into more dignity for care workers, increases in salaries or the recruitment of more workers?
The EC report also said that Malta’s expenditure on health and education could be 62 per cent lower for an equivalent outcome. Malta was spending 17 per cent more per capita on public health, than the most efficient EU member state.
Ms Coleiro Preca said that when all health centre pharmacies were to close, €40,000 were being spent on a computerised system for appointments before people could call there for medicines.
As David Adams of the WHO had written in a report on the financial cost of health-care fraud, health care financing was not just a question of raising funds. In Malta, outpatients’ appointments were already being given for 2013. Free health care should not mean patients having to resort to private clinics.
How was outsourcing of surgery being done? Were the friends of friends being allocated to private clinics?
Did Malta have a strategy against fraud and corruption? Fraud was one of the 10 major causes of inefficiency which involved 30 to 40 per cent of total expenditure.
The Budget speech had mentioned the fight against cancer as a top priority, but the government had taken three-and-a-half years to come up with a cancer plan which stressed the importance of prevention in environment and lifestyle that could save 50 per cent of cancer cases. This did not hold water with Monday’s Mepa decision to allow the use of heavy fuel oil for the Delimara power station extension.
Ms Coleiro Preca said the National Audit Office had made a performance audit on a healthier environment in schools, where high percentages of students were obese or overweight. It had found different levels of school motivation, but teachers had been given no in-service training since 2008.
Schools’ efforts on healthy eating were being undermined by parents who, due to financial problems or lack of awareness, gave their children unhealthy lunches. Street hawkers just outside the school gates were also responsible.
What was being done on the NAO’s recommendations? Both the health promotion directorate and the education directorate should get involved in this, even with coordination over tuck shops.
Ms Coleiro Preca said breast screening results were very positive, but many more lives could have been saved if the government had followed the Labour government’s 1996 start.
She was sceptical of the implementation of colorectal screening in 2012 in view of the waiting lists for colonoscopy at Mater Dei. It was good that the government would be concentrating on hip replacement surgery in private clinics, but the waiting list there was not critical. There were more cases for cartilage.
The availability of acute-care hospital beds was much lower than the EU average. Although the birth-rate was falling, new mothers were still finishing up on beds in the corridors.
Ms Coleiro Preca said means testing had not been updated for years. In the first six months of this year, 13,500 vulnerable patients had been affected by out-of-stock medicines.
The government had appointed a Commissioner for Mental Health when the relative legislation was not yet in place. She asked the minister to explain how Mount Carmel Hospital could have a ward with 27 patients in 21 beds.