Yesh Atid ‘healthcare platform’ resembles 2014 German Committee’s recommendations

German and Lapid also promised to help vegans by lowering the cost of their food.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Former health minister Yael German (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Former health minister Yael German
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid and MK and former health minister, Yael German, presented their party’s health platform on Thursday, but it was nearly identical to recommendations made last year.
The former health minister headed the committee of government officials, academics and public representatives for over a year with the aim of reforming the health system. Lapid, then finance minister, accepted the recommendations, but little was carried out.
Now the two of them appeared, stating that “for the first time, a political party has come and put the public health system at the top of its priority list. We have plans backed up by the work of a professional committee and we have budgetary solutions. After implementation of our programs, the citizenry will pay less for health and receive a stronger and more egalitarian health system,” they said.
That is if Yesh Atid is part of the coalition and, perhaps, German is health minister and, if the programs are practicable.
According to the party platform, public expenditures for healthcare will rise by NIS 4 billion.
The state would use some of this to shorten waiting times for treatments in the public system; turn surgeons into “full timers” who would remain in their hospitals in the late afternoons and evenings instead of working in private institutions in exchange for extra pay; “make emergency rooms more efficient,” “reduce crowding” in hospitals by adding beds and manpower; and moving more geriatric patients with chronic diseases to geriatric hospitals instead of geriatric departments in general hospitals.
They promised to open another hospital in the Beersheba area, increase the number of urgentcare stations in the periphery, promote allocations for celiac patients; and improve the lives of geriatric nursing patients “with money from profits on natural gas deposits.”
German and Lapid also promised to help vegans by lowering the cost of their food.