The Austrian Health Fund (ÖGK) is pushing for the financial aid promised weeks ago by the federal government.
The federal government's last rounds of negotiations on financial aid for problems caused by the coronavirus crisis took place more than five weeks ago. As part of these negotiations, the federal government had promised an agreement “in the next few days”.
Nothing has happened so far, said the chairman of the Austrian health insurance company Andreas Huss. The employee representative also complained that there was neither a new negotiation date nor anything was priced into the budget. Now the ÖGK is pushing for the financial aid that the federal government has promised in principle.
For this year, the ÖGK expects a loss of almost 200 million euros according to the current management forecast. However, the situation for 2021 will be even more dramatic because a large part of the deferrals granted due to the coronavirus crisis will then have to be written off, Huss fears. The deferrals alone are around 320 million euros for the Austrian health insurance company.
In a conversation with the APA news agency, Huss urgently appealed to politicians to actually grant the promised aid and to include it in the budget for the coming year, which has already been decided. He last registered understanding with Social Minister Rudolf Anschober (Greens) on November 6th at the Health Committee, but Finance Minister Gernot Blümel (ÖVP) “blocked”.
