Published on: 1/10/2020
Hasan appeared to be responding to news that private hospitals would soon start pricing the dollar at LL3,900
Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hasan tried to reassure anxious Lebanese Thursday that the price of hospital fees and medicines would not increase, as the head of the Private Hospitals Syndicate warned that hospitals would soon adjust their pricing of the dollar.
“For as long as the official dollar [price] is set by Banque du Liban and subsidies continue, increasing prices at hospitals and for medicines is not on the table,” Hasan wrote on Twitter. “The Health Ministry is working according to Lebanese Law and everyone should work with, not against, each other to find a solution. Stop exploiting people’s pain.”
Hasan appeared to be responding to news that private hospitals would soon start pricing the dollar at LL3,900. This would mean that patients could expect to pay around 60 percent more for treatment than when the official exchange rate of LL1,507.5 is used.
Sleiman Haroun, the head of the Private Hospitals Syndicate, told The Daily Star that so far, only the American University of Beirut Medical Center had started using an exchange rate of LL3,950 to the dollar. He added that the hospital is applying this rate only for “self-payers”, or those who do not have social security.
It was not clear, however, whether patients who pay up-front and then reclaim the fees from their insurance companies would pay at this rate or at the official rate. Insurance companies currently use the official rate to refund claims.
Haroun warned that more hospitals would “most probably” soon follow AUBMC’s lead in applying this devalued exchange rate.
“We cannot continue with tariffs based on LL1,500 ... We are negotiating now with public insurers such as the National Social Security Fund, the Health Ministry, the Army and so on,” he said. “We’ll see where we get with the negotiations with them but I am not very optimistic that we will reach an agreement in view of the financial situation.”
Lebanon is going through a severe financial crisis that has seen the local curency plunge by 80 percent against the dollar in under a year. The Lebanese pound is currently trading at around LL8,300 to the dollar.
Year on year inflation hit 120 percent in August 2020, according to Central Administration of Statistics. Due to BDL subsidies, the price of medicine increased by just 1.4 percent betwen Aug. 2019 and Aug. 2020. Unsubsidised goods that are mainly imported saw huge price increses. Alcohol and tobacco, for instance, shot up 540 percent during that period.
While Hassan made efforts to ease fears that medicines and health care prices would stay stable, Central Bank Gov. Riad Salameh has made clear that BDL subsidies for medicines, fuel, wheat and a basket of around 200 basic consumer goods cannot continue beyond November. Once they are removed, the prices of these goods will rise sharply to meet the market price.
“It will be a catastrophe, people will die in their homes,” Haroun said of subsidies being lifted on medicines.
“It will affect first of all the patients, then the public insurers who are going to pay the bills at the end of the day, and then it will affect the hospitals, who won’t be able to purchase certain items after prices skyrocket,” he explained.