The legal basis of the right to health care in Poland

The topic of the article is the analysis of legal basis governing the right to health in the Polish Republic. Polish health care system, which, in practice, implementing the right to health is characterized by far-reaching instability, but its basic foundations remain the same. Statutory regulations of 1989 are subject to constant change, and the solutions implemented constitutionality was challenged by the Constitutional Court. Also, the- re is currently no comprehensive vision of the health system, and all the changes were made so far is partial. Lack of comprehensive reforms, as well as the disorder in some areas of the health system by adopting the law uniformly regulating specific issues cau- sing adverse situations for beneficiaries and does not contribute to the stabilization of the legal system in this sector.

The fundamental human right to dignity is the cornerstone of European legal culture. The right has been provided for in international, European, and national legal instruments. Its role as a benchmark reference for all other human rights has developed into a self-standing and self-executing right, especially under the new EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This evolution from the traditional role of the right to dignity is analysed in case study based on a real case before the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic in 2015. The analysis brings forward a reflection about the need to respect the concept of dignity and how it actually is observed in the European context.

This article critically examines the main features of respective socio-economic legal frameworks to determine whether they constitute the specificity of Polish and Hungarian populism. The principle of equality serves as a theoretical framework for the assessment of both types of social design. Based on this legal criterion, differences in the social visions of both countries emerge, unveiling the perspective of an exclusive and inclusive social design. However, the conclusion appears that it is not the social-economic model itself that determines the specificity of populism in both countries but its juxtaposition with cultural arguments. Polish and Hungarian populisms are thus defined primarily by social frameworks and secondary by the rhetoric’s cultural component. The combination of social issues with those of cultural kind forms the substantive background of populism in its Polish and Hungarian editions.