Knesset Roundup | May 21

Raising the Age of Marriage

Continuity Motion for the Draft Bill on the Age of Marriage 

Ministerial Committee on Legislative Affairs

Monday 19 May 2013 | Determining Government Position

ACRI’s Position: he subject matter of this bill is an amendment to the Law on Marriage to raise the minimum age of marriage to 18 years. The Marriage Act 1950 had previously set the minimum age at 17 years. This is inconsistent with the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is a signatory. A number of similar bills have been tabled before the Knesset by a broad spectrum of Knesset members and parties.
 
The Working Group for Equality in Personal Status Issues was established in 1995 as a coalition of organizations promoting human rights, and women’s rights in particular. In recent years the working group has focused on juvenile marriage because of the severe consequences of such marriages upon minors. Juvenile marriages often cause harm to the health and physical and psychological condition of the minors involved, and are often exploitative. Marriage at young ages also affects the right to education and can lead to pregnancies at particularly young ages.
 
As a result, ACRI believes that promoting this draft bill is of unparalleled importance. Central in this bill is the transmission of the message to the general public that underage marriage is undesirable in our society. The legislation also will help the State of Israel fulfill its statutory obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Budget Cuts to Healthcare

Motion of No-Confidence in the Government

Knesset Floor

Monday 13 May 2013 | No-Confidence Motion

United Torah Judaism proposed a motion of no confidence in the sitting government as a result of the proposed large budget cuts that will harm all segments of society, especially the middle class and disadvantaged population groups.
The proposed budget cuts will especially affect the state of healthcare in the country. The two most controversial cuts in this field will be:
 

• Freezing the planned expansion of dental benefits for children from the age of 12 to 14. Waiving this vital, long-planned increase will maintain the heavy burden on the middle class to fund this essential service themselves.

• Raising out-of-pocket expenses for health services included in the national health baskets. These will include increased costs for general doctors visits and emergency room visits. This decision comes despite years of government promises and published strategic plans to reduce out-of-pocket costs for such services. This increase will result in lower and middle class families that cannot afford the new charges being forced to opt out of essential health services.

 
ACRI’s Position: The Public Network for the Advancement of Health Equity in Israel, of which ACRI is a member, sent a letter to all government ministers, members of the Knesset and the Israeli President, urgently calling on them to prevent these planned cuts to healthcare in the country.
 
Fore more information on the cuts to social services in Israel, read ACRI’s comprehensive report: “Between Realization and Dehydration” – How Israeli Government’s Drained Social Services.

Deterioration in the Situation of the Elderly in Israel

Request for Expedited Knesset Discussion

Labor, Welfare and Health Committee

Monday 20 May 2013 | Request for Expedited Discussion

ACRI’s Position: The reality for the elderly in Israel today is dire: not enough money to pay for the drugs covered in the national healthcare basket because of the associated out-of-pocket costs, despairing patients with no teeth in their mouth because dentures and dental treatment cost thousands of dollars and are not a part of the health care basket; humiliating, invasive and complicated income tests on the families of patients seeking nursing care, who are then forced to ferry them between multiple private agencies that employ cheap, foreign and under-qualified labor.
 
Conspicuously absent in the new budget established by the new government is a comprehensive plan for dealing with the problems specific to the elderly and a method for bringing the elderly out of poverty. Furthermore, important legislative reforms to improve the situation of the elderly in Israel that were tabled in the previous government are no longer on the agenda of the current government.
 
One of the most serious failures in this field is the lack of adequate nursing care provided to the elderly. This essential need has never been regulated by law as an entitlement for those in need. This deficiency was the target of proposed reforms by the Ministry of Health in the previous government. The reforms intended to place all of the entities involved in nursing and healthcare for the eldery under a single new body, reducing the need for the elderly to appear in front of numerous entities to prove their need, and creating positive incentives for the provision of optimal care. As noted above, this reform proposal is no longer on the government’s agenda, leaving the elderly to continue to navigate the deficient and complex bureaucracy alone.

In the Spotlight:

Israel’s poverty rate highest in OECD

Wednesday, May 15

On May 15, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released a new report on trends in inequality and poverty among its members. The report found that Israel possessed the highest rate of poverty among the member states.
 
Israel had a poverty rate of 21% in 2010, up from just under 15% in 1995. This was the highest poverty rate in the OECD, followed by Mexico, Turkey, Chile, and the US.
 
The five OECD member states with the lowest poverty rates in 2010 were the Czech Republic, Denmark, Iceland, Hungary, and Luxembourg, with rates ranging from 6% in the Czech Republic and Denmark to 8% in Hungary, and Luxembourg. The average poverty rate in the OECD is 11%.
 
Despite this, the cuts to child allowances in the current budget will see an additional 40,000 – 50,000 Israeli children fall below the poverty line.