President Okays Hospital Exemption from Distraints

Bratislava, November 30 (TASR) - Hospitals will continue to stay exempted from distraints, although the rules of protection are bound to change and apply to all organisations designated as being "economic mobilisation entities", it follows from a bill drafted by the Health Ministry and signed into law by President Zuzana Caputova on Monday. Originally, the exempted status for hospitals was supposed to expire at the end of the year. The Slovak head of state had been urging the Government and Parliament to address the high level of indebtness seen by state-owned hospitals in an expeditious and systemic way that couldn't be challenged later in the Constitutional Court. "Because in a democratic state, based on the rule of law, debts must be paid up and not written off via legal exemptions protecting borrowers," claimed Caputova. She perceives the indebtness of hospitals as a structural problem that none of the previous Governments have managed to tackle. Even though the bill balances dangerously close to what is still considered constitutional, Caputova signed it anyway because public interest and the protection of health and lives outweighed other considerations. This is because without the bill, hospitals would have been running the risk of being shut down. According to Health Minister Marek Krajci (OLaNO), the distraingt immunity introduced under previous governments was not in accord with the Constitution and was impugned by the Constitutional Court. Therefore, the rules are to change to include all hospitals classified as "economic mobilisation entities". At the same time, however, the protection is to be extended only to the provision of such health care that forms part of the critical state infrastructure. mf