The current mandatory health tax (or bituach briut in hebrew) was introduced in order to ensure that everyone has medical insurance coverage.
In fact, it has caused quite a burden on those who are salaried workers. In addition to having an additional 4-5% of your gross pay deducted from your payslip, it doesn’t give you anything in return. One cannot show up at a medical clinic or hospital with their pay slip and demand treatment. You still need to pay the sick fund in order to be covered. Not only that, but if your spouse is working, then you are paying double for the same nothing !
In the past, the sick funds could refuse to accept someone with a medical history and everyone needed to show up at the fund’s offices with their payslip in order to arrange the price they needed to pay – based on a table of income which was from the early 1950’s.
Now that is done away with, at least the prices are fixed for the services, but the sick funds have become insurance agents – selling health packages for additional prices for each family member, utilizing telemarketers to call people at home and utilizing huge sums for ad campaigns on tv and billboards and redecorating their offices every few months. It has become too commercial and a higher burden than ever. We need to thank MK Chaim Ramon for this "wonderful" invention which pours more money into Bituach Leumi (social security) through the back door.
Moshe Egel-Tal, CSPP
Founder and CEO, Israpay "making payroll simple"
Site: http://www.israpay.com
Email: mo***********@gm***.com
Skype: motal7
Snail Mail: p.o. box 44429 Jerusalem, Israel 91443
Follow me on social networks: Facebook, xing, twitter, Plaxo, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Digg, Tagfoot, Myspace Username: Israpay