Government proposes changing health chambers law

The bill is aimed at eliminating opportunities for the Hungarian Medical Chamber to “abuse its powers”, while it would also eliminate mandatory chamber membership for doctors, and transfer ongoing code of ethics procedures against members of the chamber to the Scientific Health Council, the ministry said in a statement.

In its statement, the ministry said the chamber was curbing people’s constitutional right to safe health services, and insisted that the body was “abusing its powers by pressing doctors not to sign new contracts concerning on-call services”.

The chamber’s “threatening doctors with code of ethics procedures” is unacceptable, the ministry said, adding that the chamber “must not threaten a single doctor wishing to carry out their duty with terminating their membership”.