Health care to face hardship

One does not have to be a professional economist to know and realize that mortgage loans for insolvent clients guaranteed by the state motivate banks to provide further loans which will necessarily (in the long run) lead to dramatic restriction/reduction of loan portfolio and to delayed economic growth. Similarly, it is quite evident that deceleration of economic growth will cause multiple negative effects upon all the areas of national economy including health care. The nearest future will answer the questions as to what kind of effects can be expected, how will they manifest and which areas will be the most hit. Some suppositions can be made immediately, e.g. those concerning health insurance companies. The earnings of health insurance companies depend on the amount of insurance payment. This, in fact, is a certain kind of tax proportionally related to the income, and so deceleration of economic growth along with the decrease in wages and increased unemployment rate, may result in subsequent reduction of payments to health insurance companies. Although, there is no danger of absolute decline, their increase rate will probably slow down. The demand for health care services should maintain (provided that financing model will remain unchanged) an increasing trend in the future because it is paid through anonymous health care insurance thereby making it independent of economic recession.An interesting situation may arise mainly for larger health care providers, such as teaching hospitals or specialized institutions. One of the greatest cost items of these institutions covers wages (and taxes) of their employees. ower payments to health insurance companies will certainly be reflected in slower increase of wages in order to balance their budgets. Generous project of regular wage valorization of health care professionals will apparently slow down/decelerate/reduce/ resulting in re-emerging dissatisfaction of medical doctors and health care workers with the level of the reward mechanisms and all the related consequences. All in all, Slovak health care will face /will have to cope with hardship. The expected deceleration of economic growth of the country will considerably reduce the volume of disposable sources in the system enlarging thus the gap between the flow of money into health care (mostly from health care insurance) and the volume of delivered/provided health care services. The balance will shift towards the right side of the equation even more, causing thus an increased pressure on a more rational allocation sources in the system alone. Rational sources allocation, in particular, could be a positive consequence of finacial crisis. The interests of doctors and patients, health insurance companies and the Government may be different, the equation to be solved remains the same