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Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu expressed pride in the government’s recent investment in health during a meeting Sunday.

“We’re adding 1,000 beds in hospitals, after a decade -- prior to this government -- in which not a single bed was added,” he declared. “We established a medical school in Tzfat, after nearly 40 years in which no medical schools were opened in Israel.”

The government is also working to lower the cost of healthcare, he continued. “We began providing free dental care until age 12, at a cost of 330 million shekels a year, and in the last year alone more than two million free treatments were provided,” he told the cabinet.

“We cancelled the Tipat Chalav clinic payment, which was 560 shekels per child, and we are spending 45 million shekels a year to subsidize hearing aids,” he added. “We added to the healthcare system in the Galilee and Negev by opening preliminary emergency rooms in 12 towns, and we added MRI machines to hospitals outside central Israel.”

“This investment has results,” the Prime Minister declared. “Recently, Israel was ranked sixth out of 143 countries on a health index.” Israeli men have the second highest life expectancy in an OECD nation, he noted, and Israeli women have an expected lifespan that is even longer and still growing.

Netanyahu expressed gratitude to Deputy Heath Minister Yaakov Litzman (UTJ) and other Health Ministry staff “for their important work in improving healthcare for Israel’s citizens.”