Speaking in Xaghra, Gozo yesterday morning, Labour leader Alfred Sant followed up last week’s revelation of a report, which later turned out to have been submitted to a Cabinet committee about financing part of the health expenditure, by revealing yet another document which, he said, also speaks of introducing payment and taxes for public health services.
This report, Dr Sant said, was prepared by the Ministry of Health and passed on to the European Union in April 2005.
In this document, the Gonzi administration proposed the setting up of a national health fund to finance public health. The government added that this fund could be a sub-fund of the Consolidated Fund and part of it could be financed from national social security contributions.
Other potential sources of funds for this national health fund could come, the report said, from specially targeted taxes, from funds passed on to the government as grants or miscellaneous tariffs.
Dr Sant followed up his claim by again calling Dr Gonzi a liar who must apologise to the people of Malta.
But in a statement issued in the afternoon by the Office of the Prime Minister, it was claimed the document “revealed” by Dr Sant was no secret at all. On the contrary, this report, whose full title is Preliminary National Report on Health Care and Long-Term Care can be found on the Health Ministry’s website at http://www.sahha.gov.mt/showdoc.aspx?id=556&filesource=4&file=nap_preliminaryreport.pdf
And after it had been presented to the EU’s Social Protection Committee in April 2005, this report had appeared for a long time on the EU’s Social Protection Committee’s website as well.
Besides, the term “miscellaneous fees”, which were interpreted by Dr Sant as fees the government intended to bring in, are nothing else than the fees charged to foreign nationals or companies.
Such fees had long formed part of the government’s health budget items (items 0349 and 0434) even when Dr Sant was prime minister 10 years ago.
The government also wanted to remind everyone that the very first tax it removed when it came back to office in 1998 was the tax on medicines introduced by Dr Sant in 1997.