El Grupo Parlamentario Plurinacional Sumar has registered in the Congress of Deputies a non-legislative motion (PNL) for its debate in the Plenary of the lower House, "on the privatization and deterioration of Andalusian public healthcare", in which it demands, among other aspects, that the Ministry of Health elaborate "a complete report on the Public Health System of Andalusia that takes into account the situation of waiting lists, Primary Care, sufficiency of staff or screenings, among others" issues.
According to the text of the initiative, consulted by Europa Press, Sumar proposes, in the first place, that the Congress of Deputies urge the Government to "strengthen, within the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System, the evaluation mechanisms of the public health system, with special attention to Primary Care, waiting lists, the sufficiency of staff, and the effective compliance with the maximum access times legally established, taking into account the singularities of each of the autonomous communities".
In a second point, Sumar proposes that Congress demand from the central Executive "to promote, within its own competencies and in conjunction with the autonomous communities within the framework of their competencies, financing measures to reinforce the public health system, prioritizing the structural reinforcement of staff, infrastructures, diagnostic equipment and the public system's resolution capacity".
In third place, the training asks the Lower House to urge the Government to "reaffirm the exceptional, subsidiary and temporary nature of the agreement or privatization of the healthcare system, prioritizing direct public management and the preferential use of public system resources as a form of care provision, considering the outsourcing of healthcare services for extraordinary and duly justified situations".
Likewise, with the aim of "improving participation in population cancer screening programs, avoiding the problems derived from the management of breast cancer screening in Andalusia", Sumar's PNL proposes that the Executive "strengthen procedures to guarantee the participation, follow-up and evaluation of cancer screenings".
Lastly, the text includes as a fifth request that Congress request from the Ministry of Health "a complete report on the Andalusian Public Health System that takes into account the situation of waiting lists, Primary Care, staffing levels or screenings, among other" aspects.
"VERY DETERIORATED" SITUATION OF ANDALUSIAN HEALTHCARE
In the explanatory statement of this non-legislative motion, Sumar maintains that the "available indicators" on the Andalusian public health system "show a very deteriorated situation".
The initiative also questions "the growing recourse to indirect management, the consideration of private centers as reference hospitals, and the continued transfer of public funds to for-profit operators, without an exhaustive public audit of quality, equity, and cost," which, in Sumar's opinion, constitutes "a perversion of the system conceived by basic state legislation."
"To this structural drift are added episodes that have generated profound social alarm regarding the management of the Andalusian Health Service, including irregularities in contracting, fragmentations, extraordinary procedures converted into ordinary practice, and lack of transparency in budgetary execution," explains the parliamentary group, which adds that to all of this "is added a prolonged process of underfunding and structural weakening of public healthcare in the territory."
In this context, Sumar recalls that between 2010 and 2019 "there was an accumulated reduction of 19,000 million euros in the Andalusian public health budgets, with the consequent loss of more than 9,000 health professionals", which, as it details, meant "a significant deterioration of staff, care overload and weakening of the system's resolution capacity".
"In recent years, far from this situation being structurally reversed, the recourse to agreements and referrals to the private sector has intensified, without this having resolved the collapse of Primary Care nor the increase in waiting lists", continues the PNL, which underlines that "currently, 12.5% of the Andalusian population is on a healthcare waiting list, with delays that in many cases exceed the maximum deadlines normatively established, well above the averages".
The group also warns of the existence of "patients who do not appear in official records due to the closure of agendas", and that "in Primary Care, average delays to get an appointment range between 10 14 days". Therefore, it concludes that "given this structural and persistent situation, a clear political response is essential that strengthens funding, guarantees the preferential use of public resources, limits outsourcing to truly exceptional cases, and ensures effective mechanisms for evaluation, transparency, and control".