All According to the Payroll: Healthcare Reform in the Name of the Individual or the State

These days, a list is circulating naming 55 doctors at KCUS who have the highest salaries in that healthcare institution. They range from 9,000 for a doctor in Cardiology, down to 3,200 for some doctors. Almost two-thirds are surgeons whose hands are bloody up to the elbows and inside human entrails. These include cardiac surgeons, neurosurgeons, thoracic surgeons, and paediatric surgeons, writes the Patria news agency.

There is no precise mention of their night shifts, overtime surgeries, etc. Just the bare earnings. So, there is nothing that won't be done to justify the commotion created around the General Hospital and the open announcements of its closure, then merger, etc.

There is no doubt that every possible way is being used to find an alibi for the director of the General Hospital, and of KCUS, Sebija Izetbegović. This is the tragedy of this government and the media sympathetic to the ruling clique.

Let us now take the earnings of the director of Sarajevo hospitals, Sebija Izetbegović, and compare them with this list for her alibi. In the asset declaration of Bakir Izetbegović, a member of the BiH Presidency, published by CIN at the end of September 2014, the monthly salary of his wife Sebija is also visible. It amounts to 5,128 KM. With that salary, Mrs. Izetbegović would occupy exactly the tenth place on this list of 55 publicly stigmatised doctors.

However, there is a small catch in those earnings concerning the freelance income of Dr. Izetbegović, which for that year amounted to 24,153 KM. It is probably related to her engagement at the University of Sarajevo.

This brings us to very serious questions about the actual earnings of some doctors, their private practices, and in that case, medical ethics.

That is not the job of Sebija Izetbegović, but of the cantonal and federal parliaments, which must regulate and legally specify this. There is also the issue of accepting bribes for official medical services. That is especially not the job of Mrs. Izetbegović. The prosecutor's offices, through police structures, should have investigated this long ago.

Or they must finally investigate it, because it is terrible when a salary list is published, for example, of a paediatric surgeon who finished an operation at five in the morning for a perforated appendix in a child, whose life was thereby saved.

And, let's say, that paediatric surgeon has no other job, neither at the University nor privately, because he doesn't even have time to get a proper night's sleep.

So, after the merger of hospitals, in order to become the general director of at least two hospitals, because one is too small, after attempts to take over the role of parliament - the legislator for dealing with the abuse of private practice, then the role of prosecutor, investigator, police officer, to uncover who is taking criminal bribes, it is time for some people to understand what their jurisdiction is.

Finally, to stop the practice of "the state, that is me."

The state should take over healthcare reform. And that means, above all, a serious and broad public debate, because these institutions are financed by citizens and concern their health and their lives.