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The explosive climate and the recriminations that began last Thursday in the Audit Committee of the Parliament - on the occasion of the findings of the Annual Report of the Auditor General on the Health Insurance Organisation and the operation of the GESY - has no end.
The scene of "war" over the abuses in the GHS, the inadequate control exercised over the Health Insurance Agency, but also the cut-off of 150 million 150 euros from the System's fund, was carried from the benches of the Parliament to Twitter, with the Auditor General and the President of the OAS exchanging "fires" between them and the Minister of Finance trying in vain to calm the spirits.
The new online rivalry started yesterday afternoon, when the Auditor General's Office clarified in a Tweet that "the intervention of the Minister of Finance to ensure that the OAI budget is balanced (as opposed to the original deficit of €110m.) and the netting of the state's debts to OAI with the health costs that OAI illegally refuses to cover, constitute implementation of our recommendations."
Commenting on the above post, OAI President Thomas Antoniou noted: "No dear Odysseus Michaelides, we will not bow to your suggestions to join in an illegal act. We will not tolerate unlawfully cutting off €150,000,000 from the fund of YESY and patients without any document, contract, regulation, etc. contributing to its destabilization."
Intervening in the debate, the Finance Minister, Constantinos Petrides, indicated to Mr. Antoniou, in his own post, that "in Parliament you stated that you are ready to implement the recommendations of Odysseus Michaelides. Lower your tone and things will get better. For the benefit of patients, not the interests that benefit from non-enforcement of the law and abuses."
However, the debate did not end there and continues to this hour, with the Auditor General stating the following in a morning post: "Note the Independent of the provisions of any other law and the in his judgment in Section 13. It is the same law that in 7 and 8 requires you to check before you pay and only on the basis of legal contracts. But we said: An OIG unregulated and above the law."
Responding to the Auditor General's new reports, OAI President Thomas Antoniou pointed out to Mr. Michaelides that "no matter how much you try to shift, I will repeat: It is not a matter of you, me or OAI. The YESY law provides for specific cuts for employees, employers and the state, and no amount of sophistry or legalism will mislead us and we will not tolerate illegality."
With Mr. Michaelides explaining: "there are amounts included in the 2020 and 2021 state budget that you had to cover, and it is much more than €150m. So the 150m is fully documented. The fact that it supposedly has to come from contracts and not from contributions is your invention."
And Thomas Antoniou asks: "And since when and on the basis of which provision does OAI cover expenses included in the state budget? And since when does your department consider it reasonable and sufficient documentation to approve expenditure of €150,000,000 with the justification that it would probably be more?"
"But it is precisely your insistence that expenses for medicines, patients not covered by hospitals within the GHS, etc., should be covered by the taxpaying citizen in addition to his contributions to the GHS, that show that the unilateral offset allowed by law was necessary," Mr. Michaelides.
Finally, Mr. Antoniou stresses that "what Ulysses Michaelides is asking us to do is that OAI should pay (directly or indirectly) to health service providers who have not contracted with GESY because their services are provided in a generic form, even if they are not provided by regulations imposed by the law."
And the online controversy continues....
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