Former CDS-PP leader Adolfo Mesquita Nunes said in Espinho on Friday that outgoing minister Marta Temido had succeeded in “digging the grave of the National Health Service (SNS) even further” with her “ideological obsession”.
After joining the XIXth constitutional government as Secretary of State for Tourism, in October 2021 he was no longer a militant of the party, but today took part in the Escola de Quadros which, targeting elements of the People’s Youth, which runs until Sunday in Espinho, the Aveiro district.
It was there that Adolfo Mesquita Nunes, in response to questions from a member of the public about state health credits, raised the issue, without ever mentioning the concrete name of the minister who tendered her resignation this Tuesday.
“The worst employees of the SNS are those who don’t want to reform it. But nobody has done so much in Portugal [pela degradação da Saúde] like this minister, who with her ideological obsession all she did was dig deeper into the SNS,” he stated.
Like the Socialist deputy Sérgio Sousa Pinto, who, although invited to the same panel, recently defended that the SNS needs a reform that has not materialized because of the “cobwebs obstructing the mental attic” of its managers, Adolfo Mesquita Nunes supported the need for new management formats in this sector of the state.
Both admit that the solution will not necessarily be a mixed model of public-private partnership, but of mutual learning. “The question is not whether management is public or private – what needs to be done is to reduce public sector constraints and, if compatible, take advantage of the best of private management,” explains Adolfo Mesquita Nunes.
For the former governor, what was happening in the country was “a regression, in the Manichaean sense of saying that the private sector cannot play a relevant role in health, that they can only play it if the state doesn’t come – And the problem is that the state isn’t coming.”
“There are a lot of upper middle class people who say on Twitter that they are very satisfied with the SNS. Well, they are, because they know I don’t know how many doctors. Anyone who has contacts can have good experiences. But who “Just like in Covilhã, having to wait two years for an eye appointment will not say it went well,” he said.
Adolfo Mesquita Nunes called on the left to stop “discussing the public-private dichotomy” and for the right to stop “believing in this conversation instead of debating concrete solutions,” Adolfo Mesquita Nunes concluded: “What most people want to know is how they go to the hospital and see their lives resolved”.
Source: DN
