The chairman of the House health committee, Efthymios Diplaros last Thursday demanded the resignation of all members of the board of Okypy, the body which runs the public hospitals, because it had delayed submitting its 2025 budget for approval. The budget went to the legislature very late, in what Diplaros saw as an attempt to blackmail the House into giving its approval, because otherwise there would be a danger the health system would collapse.

It was a rather theatrical reaction by the deputy leader of Disy, who also said: “At Okypy they should wake up, because if they do not or are just incompetent, then they should hand in their resignations and let others take over so we would not be saying in years to come that general health system collapsed or that our public hospitals have been sold off to the private sector.” Diplaros said he could see public hospitals being led to collapse and staying quiet, “because one day we will be judged by history over what we did at a critical time”.

Diplaros’ claims of imminent collapse were also supported by Akel, whose deputy Marina Nikoalou also accused the Okypy board of ineptitude, saying that “the problems seen and the failure to solve them were the primarily the responsibility of the government and particularly the president.” It goes without saying that neither Diplaros nor Nikolaou – nor any other deputy for that matter – dared to talk about the root cause of the public hospitals’ problems, which is threatening their future and that of the health system; and it is neither the ineptitude of the board members nor the ineffectiveness of the management. It is the payroll that accounts for 80 per cent of the public hospitals’ operational costs.

Public hospitals, although theoretically independent entities, still follow public service work terms and conditions, because many of the doctors and nurses still have public servant status and have ensured that all costly, union-imposed restrictive practices have remained in place. In these hospitals public service work hours are maintained – those working after 3pm are on overtime rates, operations are not carried out after this time, unless absolutely necessary, the number of nurses per bed is three to four times as many as in private hospitals. Nurses are on wages twice as high as nurses in the private sector for doing half the amount of work, while doctors are on higher salaries than in most EU countries and keep demanding more money.

It is the greed and militancy of the nurses’ and doctors’ unions that will lead public hospitals to their collapse or their selling off to the private sector and not the failure of the board or management. Neither Diplaros nor any other politician would dare say such a thing because they are all terrified of antagonising the mighty public sector unions, which have always been dictating how public hospitals should operate. Their only priority has been the maximising of their members’ income, patients’ welfare being a mere afterthought. And sadly, nothing looks likely to change.

As long as politicians, like Diplaros are too scared to even mention the main cause for financial woes of public hospitals, so something is eventually done, how will the feared collapse be averted?