Health in Israel - History

History

With the start of the British Mandate for Palestine, measures were taken to improve public health in the area. In Jerusalem, accumulated refuse heaps were removed, public rubbish bins were installed; the entire population was vaccinated against smallpox, and pools and cisterns were covered with mosquito repellent as part of the campaign to eradicate malaria. In 1929, the Zionist Commission and the British authorities sent the Jewish epidemiologist Gideon Mer to Rosh Pina to establish a laboratory for malaria research. Mer's laboratory was instrumental in eradicating the disease. The public health care system in Israel was built on the foundations of the system introduced at this time.

Health insurance is administered by the Health maintenance organizations (Hebrew: קופת חולים, kupat holim, lit. sick fund, derived from the German Krankenkasse), most of which were set up by the labour unions before the founding of the State. These Health Maintenance Organizations are membership-based. Originally, the members paid membership fees to these funds, and received in return a set guarantee of health services.

In 1973 a special law was enacted which forced all employers in Israel to participate in the medical insurance of their workers, by means of a direct payment to the Health Maintenance Fund in which the workers were members. The duty of participation was eventually changed and diminished as part of the arrangements law (חוק הסדרים במשק המדינה) of 1991.

In 1988 the government appointed a Commission of Inquiry to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of the Israeli health care system. The commission handed in the final report in 1990. The main recommendation of this report was to enact a National Health Insurance law in Israel.

In the late 2000s, a future shortage of doctors and nurses became a concern, as the rate of doctors graduating from Israel's medical schools annually had dropped to 300, 200 less than needed, and many Soviet immigrant doctors and nurses began to retire. That number was estimated to eventually rise to 520 with the opening of a fifth medical school, but still below the 900 graduates that will be needed in 2022. This caused concerns of a shortage of medical personnel, which would imperil the quality and speed of medical care in the country. As a result, Israel begin offering incentives to Jewish doctors to immigrate from abroad and practice medicine in Israel. Initially, it only absorbed about 100 doctors from the former Soviet Union annually, but has now also absorbed immigrant doctors from North America and Western Europe. An investigative committee looking into the issue also called for incentives to be offered to Israeli medical students who had not been accepted in Israel and had gone to study medicine abroad to return to Israel, and for a program that involves 150 international students studying medicine in Israel to be shut down. In addition, the Israeli Health Ministry announced the launching of a new nursing assistants' profession, and increased nursing education programs in colleges.