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View Full Version : Puig: what's behind the MD strike



NewsWhore
08-11-2009, 06:10 PM
Labor Minister Max Puig says that behind the extended public hospital physician strike is a covert plan to sabotage the Family Health Insurance plan (SFS). Puig is also president of the National Council of Social Security (CNSS). He told Diario Libre that the strikes at the end benefit private health providers that continue to offer their services. "For the new health model to work it is important that the government hospitals develop the set of skills needed for them to compete on equal conditions with private hospitals. But as these strikes continue, the private clinics are those that benefit," he says.
Rafael (Pepe) Abreu, representative of Dominican workers to the CNSS, said the strikes are but distractions to avoid discussing the issues pending for the implementation of the SFS.
Bernardo Defillo, a former superintendent of health, says that Law 87-01 that created the SFS contemplated wage increases for the physicians, in addition to eliminating the possibility of public hospital physicians being employed at more than one job at the same time. "It is that there is not an adequate strategy, and while the talks continue to just focus on wages, nothing will be achieved," he said.
In his opinion, once a good health system is in place, there will not be a need for periodic wage struggles because these are contemplated in the law. Defillo says that transparency is lacking from both the talk of the physicians and government officers.

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