Free Primary Health Care and Subsidised Specialist Care

By: Jacob Marcos

PNG NDoH journalist

The Minister for Health and HIV/AIDS Hon Michael Malabag said today in response to the November, 26 Thursday’s Post-Courier article which indicated that the Government’s Free Health Care Policy is not being implemented because of the failure of Treasury to release some allocated funding.

Hon Malabag said that nothing could be further from the truth. 

“The reality is that the Free Health Care and Subsidised Specialist Care Policy has been announced by National Government and distributed as policy to all providers of public health care in the country. Indeed, supplementary funds have been appropriated in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and have been used appropriately by health care providers and Church Health Services to prepare for the new funding environment,” he said.

While it is true that the further funding of K2m planned for 2015 have yet to be distributed, it should be remembered that the funds allocated by the government to assist in the free primary health care was to assist with the transition arrangements and to support provinces and districts to implement the policy, he said

As the policy has now been clearly in place for over two years, it is reasonable to expect the majority of transition to place, according to the Hon Malabag.

“It should also be remembered that all the Health Function Grants provided by the governments are to support the provision of free primary public health care and highly subsidised specialist care in public hospitals, “he said. 

“It is of course vitally important for the funding bodies in Waigani and the Provincial Administrations to release these funds in a timely manner to meet expected cash flows.”

“The issue which is being discussed at present is simply stopping some providers of primary health services from charging fees to subsidies their budgets,” the minister said.

He said he was personally aware that the policy was widely implemented in rural health services, public hospitals across the country and within church health services and the National Department of Health was working to ensure universal implementation of the policy through its regular meetings and updates to health service managers across the country.

Hon Malabag said it was the responsibility of all services funded by the public purse to implement government policy as soon as possible and it was not satisfactory to blame the government at this late stage in the program.