I wrote a few weeks back about an article — nay, an appeal — in Gazeta Wyborcza written by three young economists and claiming that Poland was facing a dependency-rate crisis (i.e. too many leeches like the old, the young and the sick and not enough worker drones). Among the authors of that article was one Rafa? Antczak of the Centre for Social and Economic Research (CASE). I did some bone-lazy research into the funding of the think tank (i.e. I visited their home page) but didn’t find anything interesting. Then in today’s mainstream media GW the following headline caught my eye: “CASE Reveals Payments from Banks.” CASE is headed by the wife of Leszek Balcerowicz, head of the National Bank, and for this reason is being investigated by a commission. The long and the short of it is that we now know, courtesy of a leak to Gazeta Finansowa, that CASE has received money from Rabobank (300,000 zl), Pekao Bank (550,000 zl), PZU group (550,000 zl) and BRE Bank (over 800,000 zl).

Point five in Antczak and his co-authors’ “appeal” was reform of the health service, to include:

… wprowadzenie dodatkowych dobrowolnych ubezpiecze? zdrowotnych.
… the introduction of additional, voluntary health insurance.

The “additional,” “voluntary” health insurance could be provided by, oh, for example, PZU.

It should be noted that according to CASE only a very small percentage of CASE’s funding comes from banks. However, Gazeta Finansowa points out that the payments from PZU were made when an investigative committee was examining the privatisation of the insurer.