The opposition LMP party has promised comprehensive wage increases to workers employed in the health-care sector.
Speaking at a press conference in Budapest on Friday, Júlia Ábrahám, a member of the party’s national board, said there was no reason why Hungarian doctors and nurses should earn even less than their colleagues in other eastern European countries.
“Let us be bold and try to catch up with Slovakia,”
she said, pledging that if LMP came into power after the election, they would instantly raise the wages of health-care employees by 50 percent while also increasing the allowances of people working in the sector for the duration of the following five years.
Ábrahám said governments in the past decades had only allocated the minimum level of resources to the health-care sector. Accordingly, Hungarians pay the most for medical treatment from their own pocket in Europe, and Hungary tops the list in terms of the proportion of cancer deaths in the European Union, she said.
LMP, she pledged, would make prevention in health care a priority in all areas of government, re-establish an independent health ministry, create a health ombudsman and ensure equal opportunities to health services in all areas of the country.
As we wrote few week ago, three out of four patients could survive provided that they receive proper treatment in time. However, they have little chances in Hungary – stated presenters of a forum about the Hungarian healthcare system. Read more HERE.
In response, the governing Fidesz said in a statement on Friday that if “Soros’s candidates” came into power, the money would be spent on providing for migrants rather than on wage rises for health-care workers or anyone else. “In fact, there would be tax rises and austerity schemes because Hungarian workers would have to pay the cost of settling and sustaining migrants in the country,” the statement said.
Photo: MTI