THE CABINET will not, as originally proposed, approve the budgets of private health insurance companies. On November 26, parliament approved an amending proposal from Milan Urbáni of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), a junior party in the governing coalition, that the cabinet should only debate the budgets, the SITA newswire wrote.
Private health insurance companies welcomed the move.
“Urbáni corrected the originally senseless task with his fact-based attitude, in which common sense prevailed,” said Eduard Kováč, executive director of the Association of Health Insurance Companies (ZZP). Health Minister Richard Raši, whose ministry initiated the idea, said the approved change was a compromise solution.
In October, the cabinet adopted a Health Ministry plan to give the cabinet the power to approve the budgets of private health insurers, as part of a revision to the law on health insurance companies. Analysts and some health insurers immediately objected to the proposal. The ZZP called it an intervention in the execution and ownership rights of private health insurers.
