Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2011, and reflects the debate of that time on healthcare co-payments and the first cuts in Spanish public healthcare. Later policy changes are not covered.
A few weeks ago the idea of healthcare co-payments was floated, I imagine to test the reaction of online media, which, busy covering the war in Libya and the nuclear plant in Japan, didn’t give a mere rumour about the privatization of the healthcare system the attention it deserved. The fact is that everything suggests healthcare privatization is on its way, whoever governs in the next term. Once again, someone is trying to take Spanish citizens for fools by making us believe that our healthcare system is unsustainable, when the reality is that our healthcare model is perfectly sustainable.
People use the word “free” when they talk about public healthcare, when in fact there is nothing free about it, because we all pay for it through our taxes. We are told how brilliant the American healthcare system is, when it is anything but brilliant.
According to the latest figures, around 60 million people in the United States cannot access the healthcare system, and every year there are thousands of deaths that could have been avoided with proper care.
In the United States, those who can pay live and those who can’t die; that is the only reality. Mind you, their healthcare system is a very lucrative business model for certain sectors, including private medicine and insurance companies, which are in the courts’ sights day in, day out. If senior insurance executives don’t end up in prison, it’s because over there justice can be bought with money too. Do we really want that healthcare system in Spain? Are we really going to accept it without making any noise?
The first cuts in public healthcare have already been made, and the first consequences are already being felt. Several newspapers reported cases of patients who were not admitted after surgery because a hospital had no free beds, and of operations left half-done because, according to the hospital, the operating theatre was busy and the patient had to wait for them to finish what they had started. In one case, a young woman was due to have surgery on both eyes and was operated on only one. The other eye has to wait, and she will once again face the risks of being anaesthetized twice instead of once.
Once private healthcare comes in, everything will be a business, and as in any business, the aim will be profitability. For a business to be profitable, it has to choose its customers very carefully, looking for those who can pay, which would come down to a simple rule: “If you can pay for it, you can have access.”
In some autonomous communities (Spain’s regions), the head of the private healthcare employers’ association has already been appointed regional health minister. Knowing that, we can be quite clear about the kind of healthcare system that will end up being introduced.
On the other hand, I know someone who has a friend who knows a friend of someone, who assures us that certain companies have already said they expect to increase their turnover thanks to Spanish healthcare. Let’s just say this “friend of a friend” works in the sector of insurance companies specializing in private medicine.
“Five years ago I personally saw a private clinic run by nuns refuse entry to a man with a suspected heart attack who had walked to the hospital on his own two feet. At the very door they asked him for his insurance. As he had no private insurance, an ambulance had to be called to collect him from the hospital door and take him to a public hospital. The ambulance took 25 minutes. Fortunately it went no further and the man pulled through.”
At that moment I saw clearly what economic interest is capable of (not to mention that a nun refused entry to a dying man). Do we really want that?
Featured image: Jordiferrer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
