A industry lobbyist claims private healthcare providers are objecting to price caps the Health Ministry imposed earlier this week on covid-19 treatment, saying that the pricing scheme doesn’t match the cost of providing treatment. Khaled Samir, a member of the Federation of Egyptian Industries’ healthcare division, told Al Tase’a Masa’an’s Wael Ebrashy that healthcare providers want to sit down with Health Minister Hala Zayed to reach a compromise on a pricing scheme that would allow them to provide treatment to patients without running at a loss, Samir said (watch, runtime: 7:59).

Private hospitals want the ministry to set a three-tier pricing scheme that accounts for both the type of service and the quality of the hospital, and are due to meet next week to discuss the issue, the local press reports, citing an unnamed source from the division. The proposed pricing scheme from hospitals is as follows:

• Low-level isolation services- EGP 18k / day at a tier-one hospital, EGP 11k / day at a tier-two hospital, and EGP 7k at a tier-three hospital. The Health Ministry’s scheme priced these services at EGP 1.5k-3k / day.
• ICU treatment for patients who need ventilators- EGP 25k / day at a tier-one hospital, EGP 18k at a tier-two hospital, and EGP 10k / day at a tier-three hospital. The ministry had priced these services at EGP 7.5k-10k / day.
• ICU treatment with no ventilator- It remains unclear whether private providers have proposed a different price range for this treatment, which the ministry had set at EGP 5k-7k per day.

Elsewhere, political commentator Mostafa El Feky zeroed in on Egypt’s GERD negotiations with Sudan and Ethiopia, suggesting to Yahduth fi Misr’s Sherif Amer that Ethiopia’s approach to the talks is ruffling feathers and could help strengthen Egypt’s position (watch, runtime: 2:09).