BEIRUT: Health Minister Wael Abu Faour announced Wednesday that all members of Lebanon’s artist unions will be provided with free medical coverage at any private or public hospital.
“The ministry will be responsible for paying all the hospitalization bills for all members of artist unions,” Abu Faour said before reading off the list of the unions which will benefit from the new ministerial decision.
The artists will be provided a card that states their right for health coverage which will get them admitted to any hospital in the country, he explained.
“There is a debt on us as a state to provide them with the minimum amount of care,” the minister said after he hailed Lebanon’s artists and apologized to the “numerous artists who were only remembered after their death.”
Applause interrupted his joint press conference with Culture Minister Raymond Areiji on several occasions.
Abu Faour stressed that a nation could not be respected if it did not respect its talents.
While he said his move was “not at all an achievement,” spokespeople for the singers, actors, poets, film directors, musicians and painters, who had long been waiting such a decision, praised the minister as a hero and saluted his “super-stardom.”
Abu Faour said his final goal was to provide full coverage for every Lebanese citizen, and to end the use of favoritism by officials who illicitly use their contacts to cover patient bills.
The minister warned any hospital against defying the new decision by preventing an artist from using the new card to receive full coverage.
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