“There will be an unprecedented exodus of doctors”: Rogobete on the healthcare crisis

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During a press conference on Monday, former Health Minister Alexandru Rogobete was asked about the healthcare crisis set to begin tomorrow.

As for whether or not the pay law will be withdrawn, as the unions are demanding, the former minister said, “It’s hard to tell you whether or not it will be withdrawn. What is certain is that the current version of the healthcare pay law is a disaster.”

“It’s not just a disaster in the short term, but also in the medium and long term. Imagine that salaries for ICU doctors, for example, are dropping by 3,000–4,000 lei in certain situations,” he added.

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Rogobete asserts that “there will be an unprecedented exodus of doctors from certain specialties—anesthesiology, emergency medicine, surgery, and cardiology. This exodus has recently come to a halt.”

„The exodus will continue”

When he was Minister of Health, “Romanians who had been practicing in France, Germany, or other countries decided to return home. Precisely because salaries were somewhat in order, conditions began to improve. However, with this law, the exodus will continue, and we will no longer have any predictability.”

Alexandru Rogobete noted that “patients will arrive at the hospital and won’t be able to undergo surgery because the anesthesiologist is in France. On the other hand, as we’ve seen in the committees, no one disputes the chronic staff shortage in this field.” Instead, I also spoke with Mr. Rafila, who blames a lack of political will over the past two years for failing to establish a performance-based system—a system of performance criteria that would be standardized across all hospitals.”

“I don’t think it’s necessarily a lack of political will. I’ll tell you what we’ve actually done. It’s true that healthcare reform must continue,” Rogobete argues.

“If the ousted prime minister truly wanted to carry out a reform, it would be at the National Health Insurance House. If he were to raise the rates and adjust them to 2026 levels, for example, and hospitals were paid based on today’s costs—not those from 10 years ago—that percentage would automatically decrease and things would return to normal,” concluded the former health minister.