Health Systems in Transition - Hungary - World Health Organization ...

Health systems in transition Hungary 39
Within the current regulatory framework, the central government exercises
strict control in revenue collection, determining the benefits package, setting
uniform requirements for provider reports, budget setting, financial resource
allocation, and contracting and payment. Most of these tools, however, have
been used primarily in the context of cost-containment. The NHIFA is allowed
to engage in selective purchasing only in the field of pharmaceuticals.
2.6 Intersectoriality
After the National Assembly stressed the importance of an intersectoral,
multilevel national collaboration with a particular focus on non-communicable
disease in its resolution on the ten-year NPHP (2003/1), the Ministry of
Health 5 set up an Intersectoral Public Health Committee (Vokó, 2009). The
necessity to incorporate the priorities of the NPHP in the decision-making
process for intersectoral policy-making in public policy was underlined again
by the National Assembly in 2004 (2004/11). Despite this high-level legal and
political support, a sustainable and appropriate organizational framework was
not established (Vokó, 2009).
According to several leading experts in the field, health policy-makers have
not been able to influence the organizational framework of the other public
policy programmes. Although the members of the Intersectoral Public Health
Committee reported on the planning and implementation of their own activities,
they were unsuccessful in pursuing and setting intersectoral health goals, and
rather could only initiate activities that were restricted to the health care sector
(Vokó, 2009). After the change of government in 2006, the NPHP was no longer
a government priority, and the activities of the NPHP were greatly decreased.
The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was incorporated
into Hungarian law in 2005 (2005/1), although prior to that the legal protection
of non-smokers had been in effect since 1999 to protect all persons from
exposure to tobacco smoke and to regulate the consumption of tobacco products,
including packaging and labelling (1999/2). Upon evaluation of the legislative
tools in this area, further measures were proposed and accepted by the National
Assembly in April 2011, on making public places, including restaurants and
bars, smoke free. The implementation of the new regulation will start as of
January 2012.
5 As of 2010 called the State Secretariat for Healthcare within the Ministry of National Resources.