Last update - 00:00 15/04/2007
Report: 1 in 5 Israelis excluded from public healthcare services
By Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz Correspondent
Some 1.2 million people in Israel are unable to take advantage of their right to health care, according to a report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) to be released this morning.
According to PHR's executive director, Hadas Ziv, in 1994 the state provided a reasonable health basket to all residents. "Today the services are accessble only to about 80 percent of the population."
The report, prepared for World Health Day marked last week, is based on data from a number of sources, including the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, the Adva Center and the Central Bureau of Statistics.
The report states that among those excluded from health services are Bedouins from unrecognized communities in the Negev, the poor, Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, illegal foreign workers, Israeli women married to Palestinian residents of the territories, refugees, asylum-seekers, prisoners and those whose civil status is unclear.
"There are various levels of exclusion from public health services," PHR's chairman, Dr. Danny Filc, said over the weekend. "Our report shows that access by various groups to health services in very many cases depends on ethnic origin, status or the individual's economic ability."
The report states that in 2005, about 15 percent of Israel's population (about 1 million people) waived purchase of prescription drugs because they could not afford them. In addition, 23 percent of the poor waived such purchases, and 30 percent of those who were poor and 20 percent of those with chronic illnesses reported giving up either medical treatment or prescriptions because of the cost.
Poor infrastructure among the Negev Bedouin in the unrecognized communities is not new, but the report states that it is also affecting those in recognized towns. Lack of a regular supply of water and electricity is a cause of illness and hurts access to medical treatment.
"Some patients have to receive treatment at home with machines that run on electricity, the simplest example of which is an inhalation machine, or a home respirator, and these people don't have money for a generator to work all day," Filc said. "In specific cases we have approached the Health Ministry and requested a solution to the problem."
PHR director Ziv noted the negative impact on the poor of the mushrooming supplementary medical insurance programs. "These plans have resulted in less public pressure to upgrade the health basket, because people will just buy themselves the medicines." Ziv predicts the number of those unable to afford health care will climb to 30 percent.
The State Health Insurance Law, the report states, has only been partially successful in reversing the exclusion of various groups, because the public health system has adopted certain elements of privatization to compete with private insurance.
PHR will be distributing the report to MKs, ministers, the Knesset Social Services Committee and hospital directors, although Filc expressed doubts that future reports would show improvement.