Shortcomings

Though the Israeli government has worked towards a competitive and beneficial health care system for its citizens since 1948, there have been a number of problems which have taken a long time to be dealt with. Since the formation of the state of Israel a number of committees have been formed to improve the health care services provided to the Israeli people.

In 1988, the Netanyahu Commission produced this list of problems that the government needed to deal with to improve the health care system -

- insufficient public medical services

- Ministry of Health playing the regulator and the service provider

- unorganized financing and budgeting methods

- shortage of managerial tools

- lack of incentives and low employee satisfaction levels

The Commission then proposed the following points to improve the current health care system -

- legislation to begin the NH1 program

- Ministry of Health to be restructured

- boost the competition by creating regions and decentralizing the process

- finance to be a centralized department

- new medical tax structure

- public hospitals to be on par with private hospital practices

- incentives for employees putting in extra effort

- equal pay for equal work attitude

Based on these recommendations the government passed a law in 1995 that made universal health care compulsory. However, this law had three major shortcomings -

1. A resident had to be a member of one of the few Health Maintenance Organizations. To get a membership for the biggest of these Health Maintenance Organizations, the Clalit, a resident had to be a part of the Histadrut labor organization. This created a problem of belief. So if a person didn't want to be part of the Histadrut labour organization he / she had to go to one of the other Health Maintenance Organizations. The problem with the other organizations was that the admission was controlled to new members based on age, pre-existing medical condition and a lot of other aspects.

2. One of the biggest shortcomings of these Health Maintenance Organizations was that the standard, number and types of medical treatments and services offered by each were on totally different levels.

3. The third shortcoming was that, a fraction of the population was without any health care coverage.

To overcome these shortcomings the government made a couple of important changes -

- It now allowed residents to move between different health organizations once a year without any restrictions. This change made the organizations provide equal medical services. In addition, a committee selected by the ministry of health annually determines uniform package medical services which all organizations must offer to their members.

- A new medical tax structure insured that the government supplied enough financial help to the health organizations to support all Israelis and no one was left out without a medical coverage.

The challenges faced by the government today are a lot different from what they faced four to five decades ago. Problems like AIDS and Cancer are on the rise and the government is investing a lot of its resources to educate its people. In addition, the government is spending a lot of money on research centers that are trying to tackle the modern era medical issues for the people of Israel.