Penta Blames Matovic for Underfinanced Health Sector, Lacking Almost €1 Bn

Bratislava, September 24 (TASR) - The Penta investment group has never been silent about the fact that the only way to bring more money into Slovakia's health sector is to increase payments on behalf of state policyholders, and this is also a consensus of the entire health sector, Lenka Vargova of Penta group told TASR on Sunday. "We've always found the repeated introductions of additional financing to the sector via increases to the basic capital of (state-owned) VsZP insurer as egregiously unfair to policyholders of privately-owned heath insurers and discriminating against all taxpayers," Vargova said in response to Sunday's press conference held by OLANO. Penta added that the worst tragedy for Slovak health care was the fact that its financing had been controlled for several years by OLANO representatives, including ex-premier Igor Matovic (2020-21). "The outcome of his amateurish decisions is the fact that the Slovak health sector lacks almost one billion euros today and there's a danger of impending collapse in the provision of health care ," added Vargova. Earlier in the day, Matovic released allegedly private chats between SaS chair Richard Sulik and Penta group financier Jaroslav Hascak. It follows from the material that Hascak supposedly provided instructions to Sulik on what arguments to use when dealing with the financing of health insurers in 2020. mf