BEIRUT: All Lebanese patients should be admitted to any hospital in the country without preconditions, Health Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said Tuesday.

“The Ministry of Health is responsible for providing medical insurance to all Lebanese who are not registered members of private medical insurance,” said Khalil.

During a news conference at the ministry, Khalil highlighted past agreements signed between the ministry and the country’s public and private hospitals. “One of the agreement’s articles requires all hospitals to admit all patients without any prior approval by the doctor in charge at the hospital,” Khalil explained.

The newly appointed minister also said that financial billing for the services rendered by hospitals should take place after patients are admitted.

“The agreement also says that financial ceilings can only be set [for an individual patient’s treatment] 24 hours after a patient’s admission to the hospital,” said Khalil, referencing the amount of Health Ministry funds that individual hospitals choose to spend on uninsured patients.

Despite these agreements, uninsured Lebanese still complain that they are being denied admission to hospitals.

Khalil spoke of his ministry’s commitment to carrying out a full medical investigation into a recent incident that ended in the death of a toddler in the northern town of Akkar.

The toddler, aged 2 and a half, died Sunday in Akkar after being refused admission to Halba Hospital. The infant’s father, Ahmad al-Kak, said in a statement that he waited at the hospital with his wife and sick daughter for more than an hour, attempting to have his daughter admitted. They were refused, and the child died en route to another hospital later in the afternoon.

While most doctors justify rejections by saying they lack sufficient funds to treat uninsured patients, officials at the Health Ministry believe hospital administrations are overstating the costs of treatment.

“The ministry has many objections to the medical bills being filed by the hospitals in the country,” said Khalil.

“All violations committed by hospitals in these bills will be publicized to the media so that the Lebanese can pass judgment and hold officials accountable,” Khalil warned.

Khalil said that the LL320 billion in annual funds given by the ministry to hospitals should be enough to treat all uninsured Lebanese.

“There won’t be forgiveness for any hospital that violates the agreements with the Health Ministry,” said Khalil.

Speaking at the news conference, Khalil noted that in addition to providing medical assistance to the Lebanese, the Health Ministry has a major role in ensuring food safety in the country.

“Unfortunately, some people think that the ministry’s job is only to insure the medical costs of the Lebanese,” said Khalil, in a likely reference to Agriculture Minister Hussein Hajj Hasan’s decision to scrap a draft law that would establish a national agency for food safety.

Nine years after the introduction of the draft law, Hajj Hasan said last week that he would remove the draft law because such an agency would overlap with his ministry’s work.

When asked whether he would defend the draft law, Khalil told The Daily Star that the Health Ministry, among other ministries, is part of the proposed agency that would monitor food safety in Lebanon.

“There is no way to have a public health system without such an agency,” Khalil added.

He said that the establishment of such an agency would define the responsibilities of the agriculture, health, trade and industry ministries.

Khalil also said that according to a recently signed agreement with the World Health Organization, WHO has agreed to supervise a training of public health workers at the ministry to ensure the maintaining of health standards.