Public Health Minister Jurin Laksanawisit yesterday extended an olive branch to opponents of the Medical Malpractice Victim Protection Bill by offering a new round of talks.
"To relieve worries on all sides, we are going to hold new discussions before taking any steps," Jurin said.
He was speaking after several doctors' groups said they would not join a panel set up by the Public Health Ministry to resolve disputes over the controversial bill.
To the opponents, the draft law has many flaws that need to be corrected, and they are also questioning why the Public Health Ministry is in such a rush to push the bill through.
When the ministry set up the resolution panel a few days ago, it said it wanted a conclusion on the bill within two weeks.
The ministry's permanent secretary Dr Paijit Warachit said doctors' groups refused to have anything to do with this panel because they were unhappy with the number of members, though he added that the extra faces would only be doing secretarial work.
On Monday, it was agreed that the panel would have no more than 20 members, but Jurin ended up approving the appointment of 24 people. The extra names, which included National Health Commission's secretary Amphon Jindawatana, upset the Federation of Doctors at State, General and Provincial Hospitals and the Medical Association to the point that they refused to cooperate.
Amphon has been a strong supporter of the bill and has often spoken to the media in a way that made opponents feel like he was making thinly veiled attacks at them.
The Medical Council's assistant secretary Dr Chotesak Jenpanich said members of the media should sit in as observers and see if Amphon and the other extra faces were really serving as secretaries.
Chotesak said his group would only cooperate with the ministry to settle disputes only if the panel was cut down to 20 as initially agreed upon.
Medical Association's chairman Dr Jongjet Aojenpong also said he was ready for discussions with the ministry, provided it involved forming a new panel.
The Network for People's Medical Protection, meanwhile, warned people against believing that the draft law was meant for their benefit.
"The bill will require a huge amount of taxes to go into the nofault compensation fund. Don't forget that every citizen has to pay tax, directly or indirectly," the network's press chief Dr Thapanawong Tanguraiwan said.
According to the Health Systems Research Institute, the fund will collect Bt5 for every outpatient and Bt80 for every inpatient. This means the Public Health Ministry will have more than Bt2 billion in the fund each year.
"This amount is in addition to what hospitals under agencies such as medical schools have to pay," he said. "The point is, where will most of the money in the fund really go? To date, just a little over Bt200 million from the National Health Security Fund has been paid each year as compensation for medical malpractice victims. Will the country really need up to Bt2 billion a year for medical malpractice cases?"
Thapanawong said the committee overseeing the fund would likely benefit from the huge amounts it has at hand.
"Committee members can, of course, get generous meeting allowances," he said.