site.btaTrade Unions Abstain, Employers Back Government-Proposed Waiver of Disabled People's Re-certification

July 8 (BTA) - At an extraordinary meeting of the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation here on Tuesday, the representatives of the employers' organizations supported amendments proposed by the Health Ministry to an ordinance that would ease the expert medical evaluation of people with disabilities. The trade unions representatives abstained because they had not familiarized themselves with the proposal, which will be sent to them later in the day.

Caretaker Health Minister Stoycho Katsarov told the Council that, once amended, the ordinance will scrap requirements for amputees, transplant recipients, cancer patients and people suffering from genetic and congenital diseases or complicated Type 1 diabetes to have their condition re-certified once every three years. Instead, they would be granted a lifelong disability grade. "The proposed amendments would facilitate patients and would ease the burden on the National Health Insurance Fund budget," Katsarov argued. He specified that the waiver would apply to conditions that have reached an irreversible stage according to medical science.

Other revisions would enable patients with multiple diseases who have been granted a lifelong disability grade to nevertheless request at any time re-certification of a co-morbidity if this is in their interest, the Health Minister said further.

The draft amendments to the ordinance will be laid before the Council of Ministers on Wednesday. RI/LG

/DT/