EU nomination shows up Hungary's struggling health service
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The European Union's decision to name a Hungarian as its health commissioner has raised eyebrows in his country, which itself has crumbling hospitals and no health minister.

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The nomination of Olivér Várhelyi, an ally of Hungary’s nationalist ruling party, to the health portfolio in the bloc’s new executive commission last week cast a harsh spotlight on the country’s own much-criticised public health system.

“If the goal is to help the member states of the European Union with ideas to destroy the health sector, to ransack it… then it was a great idea” to nominate Várhelyi, Zoltan Tarr, an EU lawmaker from Hungary’s opposition, told local media.

Hungary’s public health system has been under scrutiny since opposition leader Péter Magyar — a former ally turned critic of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — started touring hospitals this summer to denounce their “deplorable” conditions.

Magyar accuses Orbán of “systematically underfunding and dismantling public healthcare” by getting rid of the health ministry to save money shortly after he returned to power in 2010.

Hungary spent only 4.4% of its GDP on health in 2022, a smaller share than any other EU country, Eurostat figures show.

“Unfortunately… successive governments have not treated health as a priority,” the head of the country’s Hospital Association, Gyorgy Velkey, told AFP.

No water, no air con

Surveys show the quality of healthcare is one of the Hungarian public’s biggest concerns. Complaints from patients proliferate on social media.

From the lack of basic sanitary items to crumbling facilities, the list of complaints is almost as long as the notorious waiting lists for specialist care.

In one Facebook post from last month, a father deplored the state of the hospital in which his son, in his 30s, died of thrombosis.

“There was no air conditioning in the ICU. We had no light in the bathroom outside the ICU, and we were using our phone to get some light. There was no toilet seat and no water,” Laszlo, who asked not to be identified by his full name, told AFP.

Many patients say they turn to private providers to get better and faster medical care.

Szilvia, 32, who did not want to be identified by her full name, paid the equivalent of 3,000 euros ($3,350) to give birth to her second child in a private hospital after a “traumatic birth experience” with her first-born.

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    • @[email protected]English
      3•2 months ago

      wait wait wait… Hungary is not the best place for homosexuals, (and mostly for anyone else as well), but that’s simply not true. I know I live here.

      Facts

      • Homosexuals can’t marry and can’t adopt by law. The constitution says “the father is a man and the mother is a woman”. I know, it doesn’t make any sense but the new constitution in 2011 was written by this closeted gay guy
      • There is a thing called “registered relationship” which legally really similar to marriage, and it’s available to homosexual couples as well. In these relationships they can have shared wealth, and at the death of one of them the other party inherits everything.
      • They can’t apply for adoption as a couple, but law says single people can apply. Gay couples usually apply separately, and while not always, usually they succeed. It’s not the same, and they have to lie about their status, and legally only one of them becomes the parent.
      • In big cities homosexual couples are perfectly accepted usually. Really rarely there were some attack on them on far right assholes, but it’s becoming more and more rare, I don’t remember when I read about one the last time. There were some counter protests on Budapest Pride at the early years (2006-10), but since around 2015 it’s perfectly accepted, and peaceful, anti gays show up, but they feel that they are by far outnumbered and noone cares about them.

      So I mean there are an awful amount of hypocrisy they speak about “traditional family values” and things you based your comment on, but in real life it’s not as terrible as it sounds from your comment.