After a year of rejections by Labor ministers of health, the Likud caretaker government has granted a license to a group of doctors to run a private hospital in Haifa that will specialize in open-heart surgery.
The license was denied while the Labor Party controlled the Health Ministry on grounds that fund raising for the new project harmed the public hospital system.
Supporters of the hospital charged that Labor was interested only in protecting Kupat Holim, the Histadrut health care agency.
Yitzhak Shamir, who is now acting health minister as well as acting prime minister following the fall of the government, allowed for Dr. Yoram Lotan, head of the Health Ministry’s hospitalization services, to grant permission to open the new facility last Friday.
It was in the nick of time because South African investors were about to sue the Israeli government for non-fulfillment of its undertaking, according to Dr. Aubrey Joffe, director of the new Carmel Hospital.
Joffe also heads a private hospital established by the same backers in Herzliya Pituach, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Both institutions are staffed mainly by immigrant doctors from South Africa.
Joffe blamed the 25-month lapse between his group’s first application and the granting of the license for the deaths of many people awaiting open-heart surgery.
Joffe accused “socialist Health Ministers Shoshana Arbeli-Almoslino and Ya’acov Tsur, who oppose free enterprise” of “souring us on investment in Israel.”
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