Dvorak: Outpatient Departments Need to Be Exempted from Transaction Tax

Bratislava, 11 June (TASR) - Opposition MP Oskar Dvorak (Progressive Slovakia/PS) has called on Health Minister Kamil Sasko (Voice-SD) to ensure that outpatient departments are exempted from paying the transaction tax, or patients will be the ones who will have to pay, Alec Borovy of PS media department has informed TASR. "Since the very beginning we've been pointing out that outpatient departments need to be exempted from paying transaction tax, as doctors will be forced to increase charges otherwise. This fact has just been confirmed by the doctors themselves. The Outpatient Departments Association claims that if these departments are to survive, they must start increasing their charges. Otherwise, they will have to close," said Dvorak. At the same time, Dvorak has called on the minister to come up with a plan for regulating charges at outpatient departments. "Sasko's predecessor, Zuzana Dolinkova, promised to draw up a regulation a year ago," the MP noted. Representatives of both outpatient departments and hospitals are demanding to be exempted from the transaction tax. The Association of Outpatient Health Care Providers and the Association of Private Doctors have told TASR that the transaction tax is costing their clinics hundreds of euros extra per month. They warned that if it isn't scrapped, patients will have to pay for the clinics' additional costs. ko/df