The Health Counselor of the Government of Navarra, Fernando Domínguez, explained this Thursday that, despite the legislative halt resulting from the call for general elections, "the system will continue to function normally" and emphasized that "it does not affect at all the processing of the regional Health law, of which we have received a favorable opinion from the Council of Navarra this very week."
During the plenary session of the Parliament of Navarra, in response to an oral question from EH Bildu, Domínguez detailed that "the halt at the legislative level due to the call for general elections affects the norms that are being developed as a bill - at the state level - but not the decrees." "Therefore, in the coming weeks several of the pending ones will be approved and others will not," he added.
The counselor reminded that this Friday a plenary session of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System will be held, "in which, if there is political will from the rest of the communities, several pending decrees will move forward, among others the one on waiting lists."
In his speech, Domínguez insisted that "health competencies are mostly of the communities and affect us in the sense that we have all been working for many months on some of these norms, but the system will continue to function normally and certainly does not affect at all the processing of the regional Health law, of which we have received a favorable opinion from the Council of Navarra this very week." He also announced that "we will raise it to a Government session next Wednesday, the 28th, to subsequently register it in this Chamber; it will depend on your lordships for it to move forward."
Regarding the Interterritorial Council this Friday, the Health Minister specified that "one of the points is the proposal for an agreement by which the criteria, indicators, and minimum, basic, and common requirements regarding information on the waiting lists of the National Health System incorporated in the draft royal decree regulating the information system of waiting lists of the National Health System and establishing measures for the homogeneous treatment of the information are approved." He emphasized that "whether it is favorable or not does not depend on the general elections, but on the communities."
Domínguez has pointed out that "if it comes out, it will be good news for Navarra because common criteria will be established to make a real and unified waiting list accounting, something that we are convinced will allow us to compare ourselves with other communities on equal terms, which is not happening now," and he clarified that "if it does not come out, our procedure, our monthly communication of the situation of the lists and our analyses will be the same as until now."
For his part, the EH Bildu parliamentarian, Txomin González, has recalled that "the call for general elections has left several legislative initiatives from the Ministry of Health unprocessed, including the anti-tobacco law, which sought to expand smoke-free spaces, the one on medications, which aimed to facilitate access to innovative products and promote the use of generics, the one on alcohol consumption prevention, which also sought to limit consumption in educational environments, sports centers, also that controversial framework statute for personnel, which aimed to update the working conditions of health personnel."
In the same vein, he emphasized that, for "EH Bildu, the one that is most important and perhaps the most urgent, was the law on Universality, Equity, Cohesion, and Public Management of the Public Health System." González has asked the counselor "what problems or obstacles this halt in state legislative renewal will pose and if they have developed alternatives to this regulation to mitigate its effects on the Public Health System of Navarra, especially considering that we are processing some laws, including the new regional health law or the Palliative Care law and other types of regulations that can serve as an alternative to this state regulatory halt."