Zuzana Zvolenská

Zuzana Zvolenská (born 27 January 1972 in Bratislava) is a Slovak lawyer and politician and since 4 April 2012 she has been the Minister of Health in Fico's Second Cabinet for the Direction – Social Democracy party (Slovak: Smer-SD).^[1]

Early life and education

Zuzana Zvolenská was born 27 January 1972 in Bratislava, then apart of Czechoslovakia. In 1995 she graduated from the Law Faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava and started working in the banking and insurance sector.^[2]

Early career

In 2002, she joined the National Health Insurance (Slovak: Spoločná zdravotná poisťovňa). In 2006 she was promoted to deputy Director General, as well as promoted to the Board of Directors. At the General Assembly that same year, in September 2006, she was elected as President of the Board and General Director. In 2008, she was appointed Director-General and the Chairperson of the Board of the state-owned main health insurance provider General Health Insurance Company (Slovak: Všeobecnej zdravotnej poisťovne).

Since October 2010 she was a member of the Official Board of Insurance Trust, and from February 2011 she worked at the Office of the Adviser for Health Surveillance. Following the 2012 elections, President Ivan Gasparovic appointed her Minister of Health on 4 April 2012.^[1]

Minister of Health

Labor disputes

Immediately after her appointment as health minister, her department inherited several ongoing labor disputes, primarily with doctors and nurses in the public health service. As her ministry set about with far-reaching reforms, with the stated goal of improving insurance coverage as well as reducing overall health-care costs for patients, hospital employees unions voiced their anger over low salaries.^[3][4]

The dispute was a continuation from the previous administration, who in late 2011 declared a state of emergency when industrial lockouts and wildcat strikes at public hospitals threatened to shut down the health sector. The situation flared up again in December 2012, when doctors at Zilina University Hospital launched a new strike, where they en masse handed in their resignations, with hundreds more across the country threatening to do the same, should the situation go unresolved.^[5][6] Responding to the incident, Zvolenska said the decision to strike was "immoral and un-ethical", and said "the right to strike does not exceed the right to healthcare nor the right to life".^[6] She also confirmed that the health ministry was considering legal action against the strikers.^[7]

In January 2013 the health ministry agreed to raise the salary of doctors by 20%, calming the dispute.^[8] This was given final approval by the Cabinet in April.^[9] A raise in nurses salaries was also approved, but was struck down by the Constitutional court.^[10] In the aftermath of the dispute, Zvolenska's ministry introduced a law, which made dodging work, or going on phony sick-leave punishable by up to three years in prison.^[11] Although this was later reduced to a €3.300 fine, after yet another round of dispute with the health worker unions.^[12][13]

Health insurance reform

A plan to reform Slovakia's health insurance system, from a plural system into a singular system with one National health care provider had been on the books with the Smer party since their previous term ending in 2010. The plan involved the state purchasing or expropriating all the private health insurance operators on the market and uniting them into one, which would then be run by the health ministry under Zvolenska.^[14]

On October 31, 2012, the cabinet of Robert Fico gave the "unitary health insurer project" tailored by the Zvolenska its blessing. Zvolenska listed three ways in which it can create a single health insurance company: acquiring the shares of the private health insurance companies, taking over the management of the private insurers’ client portfolios, and expropriating the private health insurers for an appropriate sum, with the first option cited as the best alternative. If the government reaches an agreement with the private insurers about the sale of their shares, the single health insurer could be launched as of January 1, 2014. In the event of expropriation, the single insurer would not emerge until July 2014. Not unexpected, the plan faced massive resistance from the private sector insurance companies.^[15]

The plans caused controversy when Achmea, a Dutch private insurance group, filed a lawsuit against the Slovak state, after legislation was passed prohibiting it from extracting profits. The international court of arbitration ruled against Slovakia, and awarded Achmea €30 million.^[16] After running into further legal and financial setbacks, the time-line of the project was revised to last through 2015 at the earliest. According to economical and political analysts, the poor state of government finances was the reason for the delays.^[17]

Primary health-care reform

In April 2013, Zvolenska's ministry introduced a law which reintroduced the system, in which patients were required to visit their primary physician first, in order to be referred to a specialist. This was in order to avoid situations were patients visited several outpatient clinics for a single problem, thus duplicating examinations, as well as to improve the general quality of the health-care service.^[18] The parliamentary opposition, namely the SDKU said the changes amounted to "bullying" (Slovak: šikana) and "harassment" of the patient. This was denied by Zvolenska.^[19]

Personal life

She is married to Ladislav Zvolenský and together they have one son, named Juraj, who currently attends elementary school.^[20][21] She is fluent in English and Russian.^[1]

References

External links

• The Slovak Ministry of Health