This Monday, the PSD kicks off four days dedicated to health, including visits by Luís Montenegro to hospitals and health centers, and the presentation of “a document containing the policy guidelines” for the sector.
A meeting of the Permanent Commission of the PSD – narrow core of the leadership – is scheduled for this morning, focusing on health, followed by a press conference, on the day that passes a year when Montenegro was enshrined in Congress as the Social Democrats’ chairman .
Last Thursday, the social-democratic leader in Brussels announced that this week the party would “present a document outlining the policies that could end the decline of the National Health Service (SNS) and the health care of the population”.
“As the Council of Public Finance finally recognises, health management has been very inefficient. With more money we cannot meet people’s needs in terms of consultations, operations and even general medicine. More and more Portuguese are without access to a doctor,” he pointed out.
This afternoon Montenegro will visit the Garcia de Orta Hospital in Almada (Setúbal) and on Tuesday the University Hospital Center of the Algarve in Faro, and the Bial company in Trofa (Porto).
The program, which has not yet been fully announced, will continue until Thursday and will end with the debate organized by the PSD in the Assembly of the Republic, in which five draft resolutions already tabled last week will be discussed and voted on.
Recommendations to the government (without the force of law) focus on strengthening the SNS, generalization of general practitioners, access to medicines and continuous and palliative care, and reducing waiting lists for operations, consultations and examinations.
For example, the PSD recommends that the government use “all revenue derived from the tax on non-alcoholic beverages and 3% of the tax on tobacco” – which is estimated at €100 million per year – for health promotion and disease prevention through education campaigns .
The Social Democrats will also resume the defense of public-private partnerships, either for the private management of public units or for the direct realization of health services, “when such options are more advantageous, in terms of the binomial cost of quality”.
Inclusion in the compensation of SNS medical personnel “retribution according to the production performed and the health gain obtained” or the creation of a health card (an updated database of health infrastructure and equipment, whether public, private or social) are other recommendations.
Regarding access to continuous and palliative care, the PSD asks the government, with concrete targets until 2026, to strengthen the number of beds in both areas and the state’s financial contribution.
In order to shorten waiting times for operations, consultations and exams, the Social Democrats defend additional incentives for the recovery of the assistance activity programmed in the SNS and the signing of contracts with entities in the private sector, the social sector and with professionals in a self-employed regime ” when the maximum guaranteed response times are exceeded”.
The PSD also wants the government to “fulfill the Prime Minister’s 2016 pledge to allocate a GP to all Portuguese”, if necessary using the social and private sector to ensure universal coverage of the entire population.
Source: DN
