THE GOVERNMENT TO THE IMF: The clawback tax helped the state budget raise 282 million lei

The clawback tax in the pharmaceutical sector, which was introduced in the beginning of Q1 2012, has earned the state budget 282 million lei, money which will be fully used to pay the unrecorded invoices found during last year's stock taking, as stated in the draft of the Letter of Intent agreed with the IMF and obtained exclusively by the BURSA newspaper. The government intends to improve the draft of the clawback law, to facilitate its implementation.

The arrears caused by the booked invoices have been eliminated, according to the letter. The authorities will try to limit the number of overdue invoices to be paid to the hospitals by the National Healthcare Office, to prevent the accrual of arrears in hospitals.

The revision of the co-payment system, to use a small monthly payment, is still part of the Government's plans, but the deadline for the passing of the amended law has been extended until mid-June. In the previous letter, the Government had pledged to also approve the rectification through an emergency ordinance by the end of April. Also, a maximum annual ceiling will be set for the co-payment.

The authorities have approved the Government decision which introduces a negative list of healthcare services and of drugs, based on the recommendations resulting from the technical assistance offered by the National Institute for Healthcare and Clinical Excellence. The joint order of the Ministry of Health and of the National Healthcare Insurance Office has been approved, order which includes the therapeutic protocols needed to implement the list. Also implemented has been the national plan which sets the number of hospital beds which can be contracted this year in partnership with the healthcare insurance houses.

Also created was the legal framework for the Evaluation of Medical Technology, as the Government intends to not include any new drugs or prescriptions on the list of compensated drugs without conducting such an evaluation first.

The authorities intend to update the entire chapter of the Healthcare Law concerning hospitals. The chapter will establish mandatory financial audits for all the public hospitals and for the manner in which the public funds are spent. It will also make the public dissemination of the budget over the internet mandatory, revenues and expenses of all the public hospitals. Hospital directors who exceed their budgets will be sanctioned, according to the new stipulations. The chapter will also create the legal framework for converting some public hospitals into public (non-profit) foundations.

The government has signed the agreement for the production of the new healthcare cards and for the electronic system. The distribution of the electronic cards to 1 million participants will begin in August. All of the participants in the healthcare system will be included by the end of next year, the draft of the Letter of Intent states.

A new prescriptions system for the National Electronic Healthcare System is expected to become operational next month at the latest. Also ongoing is a project financed by the European Union to build a centralized database of the healthcare system, with electronic healthcare records, which would be completed by mid-2013.