The Ministry of Health’s pledge to ensure beds in hospitals for all patients within six months was met with a flurry of consternation, skepticism and doubtfulness. At best, the promise is no more than one of the so many shining promises that cannot be kept. It falls within that group of promises, the promisers of which are not ashamed if they are not met within the set time limit. The people who are astonished by the ministry’s promise have missed an important element of this pledge. This element can make this promise an easily applicable one and not totally impossible.
This element is that the ministry did not specify whether these beds would be at government or private hospitals. It also did not say if their costs would be met by patients or was within patients’ legitimate right for free medical treatment? Here lies the danger of ambiguous promises, which are not based on studies that define objectives and plans, and a means of achieving them. The ministry’s current policies leave no doubt that it has taken decisions and implemented them. These include the reopening of business centers (treatment for money), which were earlier closed down for humanitarian reasons after it was discovered that they occupy about 25 percent of beds for patients entitled to free treatment, and the reduction of the number of specialized hospitals (medical belt) from 19 to five with the probability of canceling them altogether. This shows that the ministry is keen in its drive to make patients bear the cost of their own treatment. By doing so it will not be impossible for the ministry to secure a bed for each patient within six months as long as the patient pays the costs of beds and medication. The six months set by the ministry to achieve the promise is enough for the owners of private hospitals and their partners to put more beds into their hospitals and increase their intake capacity. It is no big deal to get rid of a problem but the most important thing is how this problem is solved? Who will bear the burden of the solution? It is not surprising that the ministry will reach solutions, particularly since it has previously solved the problem of chronic patients by closing down the special center which was taking care of them.
Now it is up to the family of patients with chronic diseases, who require a long time for treatment, to provide medical care for them at their homes even if they do not have the financial ability to do so and even if patients themselves need specialist medical and nursing help.
If the style of the ministry in providing medical treatment to the sick is to make them responsible for their own treatment then any promise the ministry makes can be easily fulfilled. It is true that solutions that are not based on the objectives of medical care and do not take account of human feelings will not take long to implement.
