[Israel] Health minister: Poverty is health hazard

from Y Net News

Yaacov Ben Yizri puts poverty at top of list of health threats along with high blood pressure. Minister details plan to reduce charges on various health services, extend discounts and exemptions for poor, transfer certain services to HMOs
Aviram Zino

Poverty is harmful to one’s health: Health Minister Yacov Ben Yizri said Wednesday there was a clear connection between the economy and health: “Poverty and social disparities are becoming a health hazard no less significant than high blood pressure,” Ben Yizri said at the Caesarea Conference Wednesday during a panel to gather recommendations for a long-term plan to decrease poverty in Israel, under the sponsorship of the Israel Democracy Institute.

“There is no doubt that the trend of growing social gaps is expressing itself in health indexes as well, such as life expectancy, infant deaths and other health problems,” Ben Yizri said. “The gaps in health are affected by economic gaps. Certain financial problems lead to health problems.”

Plan for health care reform

Addressing the Health Ministry’s plan to improve the situation, Ben Yizri said, “In the upcoming period we plan to extend the array of discounts and exemptions (offered the poor) on a long list of health services.” He explained that he would act to cancel various charges on health services and for the expansion of public funding of those services.

The ministry will also work to make doctor visits, infant immunization, and medications for the elderly free of charge and reduce the costs of nursing handicapped patients.

“I have no doubt that anchoring the subsidy of mental health and nursing will reduce the gaps,” the health minister explained the aim of the future plan. Health services are slated for reforms starting in 2007, in the framework of which the responsibility for providing and funding services is meant to pass from the state to HMOs, a step which hopes to improve certain services.


“The combination of health policy that promises universal entitlement on the one hand and aid for the disadvantaged populations on the other is the right way to reduce health gaps,” Ben Yizri recapitulated.

Meital Yasur Beit-Or contributed to the report