‘Move for your health’ is the motto chosen by the White Tides to demonstrate this Sunday (in Cádiz, on Saturday) in defense of public health in Andalusia. Chance has it that the mobilizations in the eight provincial capitals arrive at a crucial moment in the management of the Moreno Government, whose manager of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) has just been summoned to court as being investigated for a possible crime of administrative prevarication for allegedly abusing the emergency contracting system once the pandemic was over. The coordinator, also from a judicial point of view, has had bad news this week as her complaints due to the collapse of health waiting lists have not been successful.
This Wednesday, the coordinator of the health tides tried to heat up the atmosphere to obtain the greatest possible impact of their call in an online press conference in which they charged against the Board for the “care saturation” in primary care in general, and in the rural environment in particular, and the “healthcare reconversion” that the administration seems to want to propose, in his opinion, to “benefit the private sector”, accusing the Andalusian president of encouraging “healthcare for the rich” by “not wanting to solve the collapse in the public.”
The mobilization mainly aims to warn about the “deterioration of public health” which, according to the organization, “is reaching an extreme of severity that we can no longer tolerate.” “Long waiting lists are generating complications in chronic diseases, even in some cases, due to lack of care in adequate time, irreversible situations of the disease and deaths. In the same way, delays in care in health centers are already being calculated between two weeks and up to thirty days in some cases,” they argue.
Mareas Blancas insist that in the face of the “irresponsibility and mismanagement” of the Andalusian Government “we cannot remain indifferent, we cannot stop showing our highest indignation and our rejection of the situation.” Among the reasons to mobilize citizens, they ask for “measures to strengthen public health, the cessation of budgetary transfers of public money to private health, an increase in staff in health centers and hospital services, and an active role of citizens in this entire process that is taking place as a consequence of the serious irresponsibility” in the management of the Andalusian Government.
As they developed in the press conference, “these are not specific errors in management but rather we are faced with a well-designed strategy that involves, first of all, deteriorating public health -mainly primary health care- and “chronize waiting lists, to allow the expansion of private healthcare.” “It is a strategy leading to generating a health reconversion that gives rise to a dual health services model where an impoverished, saturated and deteriorated public health care will serve the elderly, people with complicated chronic diseases or with a history of oncology, multiple pathologies or cardiovascular diseases.” “, says the coordinator.
These types of patients “are not wanted by private healthcare because it is too expensive for their benefit calculations”, while “private healthcare, with companies, many of them multinational, is increasing its businesses, its policies and its infrastructure, increasing its expansion at the expense of public money under the self-righteous motto of ‘public-private collaboration’, which is nothing other than a clear parasitization of the public budget for private benefit,” they conclude from Marea Blanca.
As this newspaper reported this week, the six major companies benefiting from this year’s SAS concerts – Grupo Quirón, HLA (Asisa), Viamed, Vithas, Red Cross and the Hospital Order of San Juan de Dios – have joined forces in various Andalusian provinces to form UTE (Temporary Business Unions), which have shared 80% of the market, eight out of ten patients referred from the public to the private to reduce the swollen lists waiting in Andalusia.
There is a great coincidence between the companies that benefited from the emergency contracts signed by the SAS between 2021 and 2023, which the Seville court is investigating. Along the way have been a good handful of small and medium-sized companies that, following Monday’s publication in this newspaper, have begun to denounce that the 2024 hiring process did not differ much from that which motivated the accusation of the three last SAS managers.
The defense of public health by Coordinadora, apart from the mobilizations this Sunday, also involves the processing in Parliament of a Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP) with which it is committed to “100% public health” in Andalusia, presenting 40,000 signatures of support although, as they stated in their rally last week at the doors of Parliament, they hope to “get many more as a demonstration of the support of Andalusian citizens.”
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