Protest in the health insurance sector
The employees of the Romanian Health Insurance House started a protest action for an indefinite period of time
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Newsroom, 03.11.2023, 13:50
Unhappy that their salaries have not been increased for six years, the employees of the National Health Insurance House (CNAS) and its country branches blocked, on Thursday, the public relations activity for an indefinite period of time. The National Trade Union Bloc, the entity that represents them, says that this decision comes as a result of the fact that, after months of dialogue and waiting, the Bucharest administration did not find „satisfactory and immediate solutions”.
The trade union organizations and the management of CNAS tried to solve the salary problems by promoting a draft law that would generate the necessary legislative support for salary corrections. However, it was removed twice from the agenda of the Chamber of Deputies, the decision-making chamber on this matter, because other categories of personnel from the public health sector appeared in the draft in the meantime, which had a big impact on the budget.
The President of the National Trade Union Bloc, Dumitru Costin, says, however, that the employees in the system do not demand a budget adjustment, because the National Health Insurance House has sufficient financial resources „for ten salary increases”. He stated that he discussed this issue with several members of the Executive and the Legislature. Dumitru Costin:
„This issue is known, actually very well known. I personally talked with the Prime Minister, I talked with the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, I talked with the minister of labor, who is also the minister of social dialogue. This week I also met with the minister of finance. Nobody can say: weve just learnt about a problem at the National Insurance House and the local houses, and OPSNAJ”.
The representatives of the Federation of Trade Unions in Health Insurance point out that after, last month, the Romanian Government assumed responsibility for the Law on fiscal-budgetary measures, more than 100 employees of health insurance companies migrated to other authorizing agencies in the public system, which weakened the capacity to manage the relationship with the more than 40,000 health service providers operating at national level. The trade unionists stress that these departures from the system came in the context where, in the last 4 years, through voluntary departures, CNAS lost more than 25% of its total employees.
On the other hand, the Minister of Health, Alexandru Rafila, has stated that the interruption of the provision of medical services cannot be accepted and that he hopes that there will be a dialogue between the new management of CNAS and the employees. In an interview on the Romanian public television, he said that the CNAS budget is the largest in Romania, several times larger than the budget of the Ministry of Health, and that it is natural for it to be so, since the institution pays for the national health programs, the services provided by hospitals, but also the settlement of free and compensated medicines. However, Rafila drew attention to the fact that there is a problem, since out of the 19 million people who benefit from medical services in Romania, only 5 million contribute to the insurance fund.
