It’s not the first time that our main political parties argued about the provision of health services and specifically on the subject of providing these services free of charge. During election campaigns both parties accuse each other that they have or had intentions of introducing charges for the health services provided by the state.

The first thing that we should point out to our main political parties is that state health services, although there are no direct charges in reality, are paid for by the state and the state raises its funds from our taxes and not from politicians’ rhetoric.

It is indeed very dishonest of our politicians to continue to repeat this lie over and over again and giving the impression to the people that these services are provided free of charge, they should be responsible and inform citizens that the state provides free health care that is paid for from our taxes and that the only people that do not contribute to the provision of these services are those that evade taxes or those that are exempt from paying taxes due to their low level of income.

Apart from being irresponsible by giving false impressions, they are also being very short sighted especially given the current economic scenario and in the context of the situation in the European Union today. They should compete for our votes by giving realistic solutions for the various challenges that lie ahead.

The state should promote the use of private medical insurance by giving fiscal incentives to those that decide to pay for this type of insurance. This should reduce the strains on the state, therefore, the state will reduce its expenditure which will ultimately result in either less taxes or additional funds for the state to allocate to other sectors. For this idea to work well, the state must then ensure that health services that are not covered by insurance policies due to pre-existence or other similar causes are offered without incurring any direct charges subject to exclusion of certain cosmetic procedures that people can do without.

In the long term, such a policy will not only result in reduced expenditure for the state, it should also improve the efficiency of the services offered by the state as this will most probably be one of the solutions to the waiting list problems at the state hospital. There should also be an increase in the demand for medical insurance policies and this could also lead to increased job opportunities in the Insurance Industry.

Arnold Galea

Marsascala