BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

been found. Not to mention the patients who did not have 600 NIS at hand to put out for a doctor’s visit to investigate or find out what was wrong.

Secondly, the agreement was riddled with contradiction and with friction between Clalit and the Ministry of Health. A situation where the Minister of Health signed an agreement to close all of Clalit’s clinics was hardly conductive to amiable relations and cooperation between the Minister and the heads of Clalit. One day Minister Shostak invited himself to my office. He tried to convince me to agree to accept this agreement and fight for renewal of negotiations with the government. I refused, and told him as long as he backed closure of clinics, I couldn’t accept the agreement. If he would step back from this, I could cooperate with him in anything he wanted. In retrospect, I believe closure of the clinics was an attempt to undermine Clalit, because anyone who paid the 600 NIS went to the sick fund after that to receive reimbursement. As for undercutting the authority of hospital directors: In the agreement between the Minister and the Attorney General it was also agreed that alongside each hospital director, a representative of the IMA would be appointed who would monitor the situation to ensure the director was operating according to the terms of the agreement. At the same time, a private management organization company and a public relations firm were hired by the IMA. In practice the IMA had established the machinery to replace public medicine in Israel! If this was so, at least for some of its proponents, this was not just a regular strike only to raise wages, but an attempt to undermine the very foundations of public medicine and replace the system with the “pay-for service” system that operates in private medicine. Before the strike broke out, I met with the chair of the IMA, Dr. Ram Yishai, whom I knew well from his years as a physician in the Negev when I was the regional director. In this meeting he didn’t reveal all his cards, but he did lead me to understand the methodology of the strike, and what stood to take place. I can’t forget my spontaneous reaction to his words: “If you organize the strike like all strikes, I can’t support it as the employer; but all told, I’ll try to help as much as possible. On the other hand, if you do so with the means you are hinting of, you should know that I’ll fight it with all my might.” And so it was. I’m sorry to say, I didn’t have many partners in this battle. When the strike began, I discovered that the doctors were divided in their attitudes: a portion were indeed interested in striking the system, and some viewed the strike solely as a vehicle to improve their working conditions and wages. The approach of some others took the form of a doctors’ hunger strike in Beer Sheva to bring the general strike to an end. During the strike, the Labor party was in the opposition, and Shimon Peres was the head of the party. In that Ram Yishai and I were both members of the Labor party, although not actively involved, Peres thought he could mediate between us and invited the two of us to meet with him. Nothing came of this meeting. The points of confrontation were sharp, and there was no basis for reaching an agreement between us. Attempts to End the Strike In light of the deadlock, I tried to think what I could do towards ending the strike, and I went about conducting negotiations with Clalit’s doctors in the community. Of course, conducting negotiations with doctors in the community during a strike was nothing new or out of line. Rather, I was continuing the accepted practice of negotiation between Clalit’s headquarters and its physicians. At the same time, the negotiations with the hospital doctors had been turned into negotiations between institutions: between the IMA and government ministries, first and foremost with the Ministry of Finance.

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