Private hospitals close doors to NSSF patients

Most private hospitals in Lebanon Monday turned down all National Social Security Fund’s patients, despite relentless efforts by Labor Minister Selim Jreissati and other officials to end the standoff between both sides. Private hospitals argue that the current rates offered by the NSSF are no longer acceptable since the cost of medical treatment has risen sharply over the past years. Hospitals say they will only receive critical cases such as patients with heart conditions or injuries from accidents. Jreissati told both sides that the Cabinet, in principle, is not against raising the hospital charges to reasonable levels, and stressed that such a measure should win the approval of the NSSF. The NSSF, which provides medical and social benefits to more than 1.3 million Lebanon, claims that if it meets the demands of the private hospitals, that will widen its huge deficit which has already reached alarming levels. Suleiman Haroun, the head of the private hospital owners association, told The Daily Star that the hospitals would not back down from this action until their demands were fully met. He added that the rates offered by the NSSF for its patients treated in private hospitals have not changed for the past 15 years, noting that hospitals could no longer afford to treat these patients, especially since the government raised the salaries of staff four months ago. “The NSSF pays only LL30,000 for a room and board per day. This is a trivial amount to say the least because the actual cost on the hospitals is much higher,” Haroun explained. The Cabinet is proposing raising the one-day stay in a hospital to LL90,000. “Our demands for a one-day stay is much higher but we agreed on these terms to demonstrate some flexibility,” Haroun said. For its part, the NSSF warns that if the conditions of the hospitals are met then this will deal a serious blow to most departments of the Fund such as those for Sickness and Maternity. NSSF officials reiterated that private companies were not willing to raise the membership fees for the Fund as this would mount the financial burden on these firms. In 2001, the former government of late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri cut the subscription fees on both the employers and employees in an attempt to alleviate the financial burdens on both sides. But the NSSF has run into a deep deficit since 2001, after the cuts in membership fees, and told successive governments that they could not continue to operate under these conditions. To make matters worse, the state owes the NSSF close to $600 million in arrears. Haroun rejected the NSSF’s claims that it could not afford the new hospital rates, arguing that the private sector had agreed to raise the salaries of the staff without any objection. “The NSSF will be able to collect more money from employees and employers after the salaries have been raised,” Haroun said. He estimated that the revised rates proposed by the government would only cost the NSSF an additional LL108 billion a year. Haroun blamed the NSSF’s board of directors for letting the deficit rise to such levels over the past 15 years. “They [NSSF] should have adopted all the measures to reduce the deficit. We can’t pay for the mistakes of others. This is not fair,” he added. Economists fear that the NSSF may reach a point where it will not be able to provide any medical and social services for th beneficiaries if the management does not take bold steps to restructure the Fund.