But the cost of reducing health care is not something you see on your television screen. Proving a direct link between a lack of funding and medical failures is a hard thing to do. Most Israeli hospitals do not have a single senior physician available at night and on weekends. Not even in the emergency rooms and hospital wards. The reason for this is a lack of funding.
Senior doctors cost more.
No one knows how many mistakes are made each year by inexperienced doctors working night and weekend shifts. The treasury's plan speaks of reducing all ministerial budgets by 4 percent. This is not accurate. We are now at the end of May. Five months of the 2001 budget year have already passed. Cutting 4 percent off each ministry's annual budget actually means a 7 percent reduction in the remaining months.