What will the election bring to health?

The fact that former Health Minister Adam Niedzielski dropped out of Law and Justice's electoral lists altogether was predictable. True, even a few days before the announcement of the final shape of the lists, some of the trade media speculated that perhaps Niedzielski had only lost his first place, but it was even certain that Jaroslaw Kaczynski's party was eager to get rid of the ballast that Niedzielski was becoming for it. Especially since the campaign strategy was based on plans to overtake part of the Confederation's electorate - and on these voters the former head of the health ministry acts like a bull's-eye. This, of course, does not mean that Niedzielski has completely and irrevocably said goodbye to the sphere of public activity - to the surprise of quite a few participants, he visited the Economic Forum in Karpacz, where, admittedly, he did not appear in panels devoted to health (he was a guest at a session on the reconstruction of Ukraine, which immediately set off rumors, that he would become an advisor to the Ukrainian government, although at the same time it was announced that such a mission had been undertaken by former Deputy Health Minister Krzysztof Łanda, there is no special chemistry between the two men, to say the least), but in absentia he received thanks "for his consistency and proficiency" in the matter of the Law on Quality in Health Care.

Here, however, there was no talk of sensationalism. In contrast to the fall off the list - at the last minute - of Tomasz Latos, a long-time MP, for many years first vice-chairman and for five-plus years chairman of the parliamentary Health Committee, undoubtedly one of the most important and influential figures in health care in recent years. And - here, too, there is no doubt - the natural leader of the Law and Justice Party in the district, which achieved an impressive 60,000 votes in the last parliamentary elections. Why did Latos find himself off the list for the Sejm? All explanations on the matter (first that he would run for the Senate, then that he had been promised a seat in the European Parliament) have either falsified or make no sense - if Latos were to replace his party rival Kosmas Zlotowski in the EP, the latter would have to be guaranteed a seat in the Polish parliament, and Zlotowski is not running. There is speculation (Tomasz Latos himself does not want to comment on what happened) that the MP "got a ricochet" in the visa scandal - two of his colleagues were linked to Edgar K., who was charged in the case.

Not a sensation, but a certain surprise, however, is the presence on the Law and Justice list of Andrzej Sosnierz, a perennial critic (in the first and second terms) of the United Right's policies on health care issues. So¶nierz, by the way, left the club in the ending term, co-founding a circle that usually votes with PiS (though not alway...