Despite the promises, the bills keep coming

Shalom Vidar, a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor, weighed 31 kilograms when he was first hospitalized at a geriatric hospital. Vidar was in serious condition. Because of his various illnesses he required full-time medical attention, including a permanent feeding tube.

The Health Ministry considers this complex nursing care. A patient of this kind, unlike a patient who requires "regular" nursing care, needs more than help from family members or caregivers; he has to be hospitalized.

However, there is another factor for complex care patients: The hospitalization is the responsibility of the health maintenance organization, but the patient and his family have to pay for it. A day's hospitalization costs NIS 97 - and the health ministry does not contribute even one shekel.

Vidar was hospitalized at the Hartzfeld Geriatric Hospital in Gedera in May 2008. His condition deteriorated, but the hospitalization continued. His devoted son Yitzhak, who did not leave his side, was taken aback when he received the first bill. Leaving the office of the department head after being told he needed to pay, he noticed a plaque on the wall stating the ward had been renovated by the Claims Conference, that same organization that is supposed to distribute German reparations payments to Holocaust victims.

Yitzhak Vidar could not understand why Claims Conference money was being used to renovate departments that serve the public at large, as opposed to being channeled exclusively to help survivors. He approached the Claims Conference representative in Israel, Avraham Pressler, who contacted the hospital on his behalf and requested that Vidar be exempted from paying. The hospital refused.

Apparently, the hospital had looked into Yitzhak Vidar's financial condition and found he lived off a Defense Ministry pension, after being injured in the Israel Defense Forces, of NIS 4,500 a month. The hospital thought this enabled him to pay for his dying father's hospitalization, no deductions.

Ruth Sinai covered the story in Haaretz in July 2008. The Claims Conference replied then that it could not assist Holocaust survivors who were in nursing facilities. Vidar the son turned to "Hamishmar Haezrahi," my radio program with Guy Meroz, and we approached the director general of the Pensioners Affairs Ministry, Dr. Avi Bitzur.

He was shocked, and contacted Prof. Yaakov Gindin, who is in charge of geriatric services at the Kaplan-Hartzfeld medical center.

Bitzur told us in July 2008: "Prof. Gindin told me that the fact that Holocaust survivors pay for complex nursing care is due to a High Court of Justice mistake a few years ago. Complex nursing care was not included in state-funded treatment. Until the matter came to light on the radio, there had been no case like this, no one spoke about the matter and nothing changed."

Now, Bitzur promised, the mistake would be corrected. First they would take care of Shalom Vidar's case, he said, but the Pensioners Affairs Ministry would also immediately try to cancel other Holocaust survivors' complex nursing care payments.

Fully 30 percent of Holocaust survivors are defined as "complex" nursing patients. Thirty percent are also defined as in poverty.

At the beginning of August, Vidar was informed that the payments had been frozen, and we were told a committee was being set up to address the issue.

Two months later, on October 6, Shalom Vidar died. His son had not yet finished the seven-day shiva mourning period when he received a letter from the hospital demanding more than NIS 11,000, as well as interest and linkage, for five months' hospitalization.

Yitzhak called us, we called Bitzur, and on October 22, Bitzur told us he had sent quite a few letters to ensure the debt had been written off, but that the administrative work takes a lot of time, and now it was the holidays and everything would be settled afterward.

The holidays came and went, but the demands for payment continued. The Pensioners Affairs Ministry told us they had set up a government committee specifically to prevent cases like this. A special fund would pay for survivors' complex nursing care.

Since it takes time to pass a budget and set up the mechanism, they explained, they would "meanwhile get assistance from the Holocaust victims' welfare fund, which is a non-governmental entity, to create a cash fund to pay for similar cases."

Yet another demand for payment arrived on October 27. Once again we called the hospital, and were told they would freeze legal proceedings against the family, and that the hospital and the Clalit HMO would discuss and decide whether to cancel the debt.

On February 16, Vidar received a letter from the hospital's lawyers.

"If you do not pay your debt immediately, we will take legal action," they wrote. Once again, we called them; once again both the hospital and the ministry promised everything would be taken care of.

A week ago, Vidar received a letter from the bailiff's office. In our last telephone conversation with Bitzur, he sounded more desperate than anyone else. The committee he set up had no budget; the welfare fund had no money; the new government had not yet taken power so there was no one to talk to; and he could not understand why, despite all its promises, the hospital was continuing to send bills and pursuing legal action.

Bitzur was particularly frustrated that his hopes of changing something as ministry director general had been dashed. And I would like to know whether anyone knows how some order can be instated here.