Medical leaves, defended by the Minister of Health

Fundamental rights of employees have been faltering more and more lately. For example, sick leave seems, in many cases, a fad from the perspectives of certain governors. On the other hand, the Minister of Health, Alexandru Rafila, stated that employees who have medical problems have the right to medical leave, but it must be checked systematically if abuses are committed, either by doctors who prescribe too much, or by people who benefit from too much mountain medical leave: "Medical leave is a right of any employee, so that when he has a certain condition that makes it impossible to carry out his professional activity, to receive an income that allows him to live during that period in which he is on medical leave. From my point of view, the first thing that must be done in such a situation would be to operationalize a legal provision that exists at the moment, in the CNAS statute, which has the right and also the obligation, after all, to control there where a red flag appears, i.e. someone who prescribes extremely many medical leaves or someone who benefits from a lot of medical leaves". The minister stated that there are also very serious ailments, oncological, cardiovascular ailments, accidents after which medical leave is needed, but he states that "this thing must be checked more systematically". The minister added that he does not want to depart from the premise that such leaves are given excessively: "I think that this is the way to keep a little under control the possible excessive prescription of medical leaves by some doctors, but I would not wants us to start from the premise that this is systematic. I would like to start from the premise that he can appear, it must be checked whether or not there are real circumstances for prescribing the leave and in the end the payer, CNAS, must control this". The Minister of Health added that, on average, 6 billion lei was the sum of all medical leaves granted in a year.

The Minister of Finance, Marcel Boloş, stated, during the debate of the simple motion submitted against him, that "the medical leave payment system is harmful and leads to various speculative activities", which is proven by the figures: "2022 - number of medical certificates issued : 4,124,886, attention, number of days of medical leave 29,452,257, the value of the budget allocated for the payment of medical leaves 5.9 billion lei. 2023 - number of medical leaves issued: 3,361,223, number of days of medical leaves 24,870,933, budget value allocated for the payment of medical leaves 3.6 billion lei. And for the year 2024, we also have a record budget allocated for medical leaves of approximately 3.7 billion lei. Only in 2023, out of the total of 3,361,223 medical certificates issued, 1,800,883 were issued by individual medical offices, 1,317,722 by specialized outpatient clinics and only 242,618 medical certificates issued by hospitals". He also presented what types of medical certificates are issued: Common illness: 1,905,100; Medical-surgical emergency: 695,106; Infectious disease: 57,735; Cardiovascular disease: 69,309 and others. "While the number of medical certificates, which you talk about in the text of the simple motion, have the following structure: Pregnancy and dementia: 245,470, sick child care: 130,855, neoplasms: 123,690".

Marcel Boloş also presented the list of counties and doctors with the largest number of medical leaves and days of medical leave granted: Prahova County, top 20 doctors: 15,402 medical leaves with 155,743 days of medical leaves; Iasi County, top 20 doctors: 12,038 medical leaves with 153,719 days of medical leaves; Timiş County, top 20 doctors: 7,542 medical leaves with 73,767 days of medical leaves.