As of September 1, 2024, the part of an Oregon law that allowed possession of small amounts of psychoactive substances for personal use only under penalty of a misdemeanor was repealed. The decriminalization, which Oregonians voted for in a referendum in 2020, was intended to reduce the social stigma of addicted individuals, reduce overdose deaths, and ease users’ pathways to rehab.
Recently, a Slovakian newspaper published a commentary about tighter regulation in the healthcare sector. The question remains what exactly does he mean by the word “tighter regulation”?
The healthcare system has always been one of the most crucial points of a country’s social security, especially in Hungary’s case. In the last 15-20 years the Hungarian healthcare system went through a lot of changes and the general consensus is that despite the state insurance, the services aren’t sufficient.
The evolution of modern society has been intertwined with successive industrial revolutions. In the first industrial revolution, the spread of the steam engine began to replace human and animal labor. In the second industrial revolution, the assembly line enabled mass production and the increasingly simple manufacture of increasingly complex things.
Public healthcare should also work with priorities. What has more priority? Financial or geographical accessibility? Quality or quantity? What should be clearly free and, conversely, what is the Slovak patient-insured-consumer willing to pay for?
The pandemic period has not been kind to some patients’ relationship with health professionals. A period of information uncertainty, spawning hoaxes. The patient with their own opinion and their own information falls under a crooked gaze.
There are private solutions, for healthcare, schools, and transport. They are popular or at least coveted. Yet, there is a catch. The state always lurks beneath the surface. Many taxi companies are owned by cronies and have a huge lobbying power. There is a fixed rate and no competition in Budapest.
I dare to write that the health financing situation is becoming increasingly muddled. With all three health insurance companies (allegedly) starting to cut their losses, the problem of financing Slovak healthcare has moved up a notch. Of course, it is too early to be scared, but from a systemic point of view, any future financial problems of the health insurance companies would be much more serious than the financial problems of the hospitals.
The number of health professionals is a globally discussed issue. The WHO expects 18 million missing health professionals by 2030, mainly in lower- and middle-income countries. Two out of five active doctors in the United States will be 65 years of age or older in the next decade.
Throughout the last year and a half, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed weaknesses in healthcare, education, digitalization, and data collection, just to name a few. The shortages of essential goods experienced by many countries during the pandemic has inspired some to turn inwards.
