After much back-and-forth in the media, in mid-July an agreement was finally hammered out between the Syndicate of Hospitals and the various government entities and public employee groups that collectively owe almost LL500 billion in unpaid hospital bills. The terms of the deal stipulate that the hospitals’ primary public debtors – including the ministry of health, the labor ministry, the army, and the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) – would each pay the entire amount they owed from 2003 by the end of August.
Although the president of the NSSF’s administrative board, Maurice Abu Nadher, had previously argued in published reports that the Fund’s outstanding bill was the result of incomplete applications on the part of hospitals, as well as a lack of government funding for the Fund itself, he told Executive there now was “no problem, we have the money … I think we will be able to make our payments by August.”
Saleem Haroun, the Syndicate of Hospital’s president, is not entirely convinced. “They have made agreements before and then broken them. Either way, we are still owed for the last seven months of 2004 and still face serious problems as long as there are delays in payment.”
Abu Nadher, for his part, isn’t entirely convinced of the hospitals’ woes: “I don’t think they are facing a dire situation. After many years, they are making too much money.”
For Antoine Abi Akl, a hospital payment’s manager at Berytus, a health insurance provider, private insurers will most likely continue to be caught in the middle. He said: “Hospitals try to compensate by putting more pressure on the private sector to pay their bills,” since private insurers customarily pay their bills within two to three months.
Lebanon’s AIDS problem?
According to the UN’s latest annual report on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, the number of individuals in Lebanon living with the disease jumped 40% between 2001 and 2003, from an estimated 2,000 cases to 2,800 cases.
The increase seemed to buttress the stark warning issued earlier this year by the National Aids Control Program (NACP), a joint effort by the ministry of health and the World Health Organization, that “HIV/AIDS could emerge in a few years as a primary threat in Lebanon, which will affect major sectors including health, social affairs, tourism, and labor. It will be an additional burden on a slowed down economy, increasing the costs of the health care, and on a social structure barely developed after years of civil troubles.”
Although one NACP official stressed that the UN’s number was only an estimate – there are currently 756 people in Lebanon known to be living with HIV/AIDS – the globally respected report may just provide some much needed fire for the government to move even more quickly on key elements of its recently issued five-year strategic plan.
Key among the goals envisioned by policymakers in the plan is a greater involvement on the part of the private sector – especially in so far as private hospitals and the media are concerned. As the plan noted, “the private sector’s involvement in the fight against AIDS is imbalanced.” What’s more, there have been “few links” established between the government and private hospitals, which treat 90% of HIV/AIDS cases.
The plan also looks toward the creation of a “legal and policy environment which protects the rights of all persons” infected with HIV/AIDS – an effort that would invariably affect private companies in Lebanon, since few have formal policies regarding employees living with HIV/AIDS.
Indeed, according to a recent World Economic Forum report, fewer than 6% of firms say they have such policies in place. “Companies are not particularly active in tackling AIDS, even when they expect the epidemic to cause serious problems for their business,” the report said.
