Janez Poklukar was today endorsed by the Health Committee as candidate for health minister.

The 42-year-old medical doctor told the committee that in addition to fighting the Covid-19 epidemic, his priorities would be to strengthen primary care, expand integrated care, improve work conditions, and work to set up an agency for quality in healthcare. Poklukar, who is also the director of the University Medical Centre Ljubljana, said the current public healthcare financing system was not sustainable and that what needed to be done was to find other sources, disperse, increase revenues, at the same time provide resources from the budget, re-examining the scope of services covered by mandatory health insurance and consider transforming the top-up health insurance.

The National Assembly is to vote on his candidacy next week.