The privatisation of Poland's public healthcare system

The Polish public health system has been hit by a wave of protests and strikes over the past few weeks. Doctors and nurses are demanding higher salaries and the health minister is already talking about raising taxes. Elzbieta Cichocka comments on a potential approach to restructuring the health sector: "Privatisation and dissection - the calls for this approach are growing louder among the public. Many private enterprises want to gain access to guaranteed public funding. But would a system consisting of competing private companies really be cheaper? They too would have to employ experts, fix price lists and watch out for hospital fraud. They too would have to invest money in marketing. Who else is to take charge of all this? In the US, one of every four dollars spent by health companies goes into administration costs - that would be 10 billion zloty in Poland, compared to the current 450 million which we're all so busy complaining about."

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