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The President of the Republic sent back to the Government, on 11 March instant, the bill that alters the rates of deduction for ADSE, SAD and ADM from the salaries of the beneficiaries of the referred health subsystems, setting those at 3.5%.

Following are the grounds upon which the presidential decision was based:

In accordance with the bill’s preamble, the measure is aimed towards the sustainability of the referred systems. However it gives rise to serious doubts as to whether it is necessary to increase the deductions from 2.5% to 3.5% to achieve the intended objective. At a time when such heavy sacrifices are demanded from public servants and pensioners, with reductions in salaries and pensions, the strict adequacy of this increase to the objective of the self sustainability of the respective health systems must be clearly shown.

The Informative Note supplied by the Government within the scope of the request for clarification related to this issue shows that the value of 3.5% will provide revenue far in excess of the expenditure estimated in the ADSE budget. Upon examination it is obvious that, even if the increase were only half, that is, 0.5 percentage points, the accounts would show a sizeable surplus.

Although it is undisputed that contributions towards ADSE, SAD and ADM aim to finance the expenses of these health systems, it does not seem adequate that their increase should be aimed above all to consolidate the public accounts.

Moreover the estimated amount of 60 million euros to be transferred from the ADSE budget to the NHS, to contribute towards the purchase of pharmaceutical products by the beneficiaries, cannot but give rise to the same doubts, since the NHS equally contributes towards such purchases by those that are not beneficiaries of the referred health systems.

On the other hand, since the enactment of Law no. 3-B/2010, dated 28 April, the registration in ADSE became voluntary, even for all the previous beneficiaries, and should thus be considered that a possible future non-sustainability could be concomitant with this ease of choice, rather than with the value of the contributions. In this instance the Armed Forces and the Security Forces warned that such could lead to the exit or non-registration of the younger people, or of those who receive higher salaries, thus resulting in the sustainability of the system becoming seriously jeopardized.

In this context, the risk of non-sustainability of the system will be greater the more disproportionate the contribution will be to the cost of the services rendered or to the weight of the deductions in salaries and pensions, above all within an environment of heavy reductions in the available income of public servants.