BE wants to prevent “the possibility of privatization of primary health care” through a proposal in the budget, given that many socialists are uncomfortable with the fact that the Minister of Health is considering this “supply to private”.
In a conversation with Lusa, the BE coordinator and deputy, Catarina Martins, detailed this proposal to amend the state budget for 2023 (OE2023) with a lot of criticism of the PS government after this week, in parliament, the Minister of Health , Manuel Pizarro, who has admitted the creation of Family Health Units (USF) type C, which to the blockers would be the “privatization” of primary health care.
BE’s proposal, on the one hand, aims to “remove any obstacle to the creation of USF type B”, that is to say “to end the quotas, with the vetoes that exist for the creation of this USF” which ” turned out to be very good for the country”.
“And remove from the law, pure and simple, the possibility of making USF type C. They have never been regulated, the country does not need them, we have already learned from the example of the United Kingdom that it is a bad path” , he maintained.
Catarina Martins assumed she was surprised by this possibility assumed by Manuel Pizarro “because what was always under discussion was the need to generalize the type B USF, that is, those who, being public, give autonomy and pay with incentives”.
“It is very strange that the PS suddenly says that maybe the solution could be private companies”, he criticized, as this is “a change in the policy of the PS”.
For the BE leader, this solution “makes no sense unless the PS really wants to privatize the SNS”.
Catarina Martins felt that this USF model is “a covert way to destroy the SNS to turn everything over to the disease trade.”
“I am sure there are many socialists, and in particular many socialists who are working on the SNS, who are building the SNS, who are thinking of the SNS, who are certainly very uncomfortable with a minister even considering switching primary care over. to private companies. health”, he emphasized.
Catarina Martins recalled that former Health Minister Marta Temido said in parliament that she would not continue with this model, stressing that this is “a proposal made by the strategic council of CIP, the bosses of the bosses, so was stated in the IL programme, both IL and PSD have proposed it and now the PS says it is considering doing it”.
The blockista leader drew attention to three risks of this solution, the first of which is that “once I provide healthcare to a private individual, I will never leave”.
“As happened with the complementary diagnostics, the most likely thing is that the big economic groups that control much of the health care system will end up owning every primary care company out there and then have great blackmailing power over the state,” he still warned, adding that “the private ones don’t just have clinical criteria”.
According to Catarina Martins, “where there’s a type B USF, there’s no shortage of general practitioners”.
“We have been telling the government for many years that in order not to lose GPs and attract trained people, it is necessary to generalize this model, the USF type B, across the country, but the government has always set quotas, vetoed “, convicted.
Source: DN
