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East Asia Daily / 東亞日報 / 동아일보 / Tong-a Ilbo

Austerity will delay free healthcare rollout, Minister of Health says

SHUNTIAN — The Ministry of Health's plans to provide free, universal healthcare within the FEUSSR will be set back due to the advent of austerity, Minister of Health Li Junnan said this morning.

Minister Li was speaking to reporters as part of a public consultation on healthcare reform. She revealed the Ministry's plans, which had been in the works for years, to transition the FEUSSR's public health system from a insurance-based model to a wholly-subsidised model.

Currently, most of the FEUSSR's population is covered by universal social insurance, where employers, local governments, and the Federal government each provide contributions to support individual healthcare costs. With the ballooning of the Ministry of Health's budget from $120 billion USD in FY1 to $400 billion USD last year, wide-ranging subsidies were gradually introduced to cover the costs of essential medicines, vaccines, viral testing kits, and more. This has consequently led to discussions of reforming the current insurance system, so that a single-payer healthcare system could be implemented - a plan which heavily hinged on the Ministry's access to funding.

With the Ministry experiencing a drastic 25% cut to its budget the next year, the Minister has said that such plans would need to be put on the backburner owing to fiscal constraints and limitations in resources. According to funding projections, over 60% of the public health workforce will have their working hours cut by anywhere from 6-15%, and subsidies for essential medicines will need to be halved across the board just so the Ministry can afford to make payroll. Furthermore, over 400 ongoing projects to renovate or construct new public healthcare facilities will need to be postponed for a duration of two years. The Minister will also arrange for two rounds of public consultation to explore innovative ways to save on costs.

"The decision to postpone reforms is something that we had to think really hard about,” Minister Li said. "It is a very regrettable outcome because it was going to be so important and positive to the people's livelihoods. With that being said, I hope to make it very clear that this is merely a stumbling block, and that we, if things go well, will be able to deliver on universal single-payer healthcare."

Public reaction to the decision has been unwelcoming. A group of 100 petitioned outside the Ministry of Health's main headquarters later that day, while others called on the Congress of Peoples online to immunize the Ministry from austerity.