Privacy concerns stall program to cut Holocaust survivors' drug costs

Less than a week after the Social Affairs Ministry announced it would be implementing plans to cut medication costs by 90 percent for some 80,000 Holocaust survivors, new legal complications have emerged to further delay the initiative.

Haaretz has learned that the Finance Ministry has received dozens of letters in recent days from individuals citing privacy protection laws to request that their health maintenance organizations not be informed that they are in fact survivors.

The program is intended to apply to individuals appearing on the list at the Finance Ministry's bureau on Holocaust survivors' rights.

Survivors would automatically appear on the computerized list of people eligible for reduced-price drugs, and would receive the discounts after entering his or her personal data electronically upon purchase.

Now, however, it seems a legal solution will be required to resolve the privacy issues raised by some survivors. Among those who filed requests to remain off the list are kibbutz members concerned their respective kibbutzim will discover they have begun receiving pensions, and other individuals who prefer not to disclose that they lived through the Holocaust.

Finance Ministry officials said in response that it is possible a special commission will be created to examine the issue's legal ramifications, and perhaps even to send letters of consent to each of the 80,000 survivors in question, moves that would significantly delay the program's implementation.

The Social Affairs Ministry said Sunday that it too is considering the issue and would make every effort to adhere to the timetable it had presented to survivors, according to which reduced-price drugs would be available as soon as mid-May.

An earlier study conducted jointly by the Finance Ministry and the Clalit HMO on giving free drugs to survivors receiving benefits from the Israeli government has already received official authorization, but will also likely be reexamined in light of the current controversy.

	Holocaust survivors protesting outside the Knesset in Jerusalem.
	Photo by: (Haaretz)