The decision of private insurers to leave the Muface concert void for the years 2025 and 2026 has put the Ministry of Public Function in an unprecedented situation, which has forced the department headed by Óscar López to propose a “reflection process” on the model that allows officials to choose between receiving health care through private companies or in the public system, either when they get a job or every January.
The ministry is now studying addressing the “voluntariness of the model, which would mean that public employees now covered by mutualism can choose to be in the common regime or in the special regime” and that this decision be made “once and forever,” according to has advanced this Friday The Country and elDiario.es has been able to confirm it from Public Function sources. This change in the model would mean that officials cannot make the jump from one system to another and would make it “easier to plan the system’s sources of income and its sustainability,” they point out.
The private insurers, mainly Adeslas, Asisa and DKV that had been providing the service, refused to attend the agreement that the Government approved at the beginning of October and which represented an increase in the premium of 17.12%, which the companies consider insufficient to guarantee the quality of the service without incurring losses. During the previous weeks, the private healthcare lobby had already been saying that even a 25% increase would put the maintenance of the model at “risk.”
In addition, ministry sources point to another milestone. More and more officials choose public health over private insurance. The latter continue to monopolize the benefits of the majority of the civil service, 70%, but the trends are against them. Since 2013, public workers who opt for Social Security have gone from 18 to 30%. This rate is driven mainly by new incorporations.
“The increase in the last three years is due, above all, to the volume of income of primary and secondary teachers, through the stabilization and competitive examination processes,” Public Service sources indicated to this editorial team. In total, there were 80,000 public employees, with an average age of 49 and 38 years and who “have always had attention from the public health service.” And they will not be the last, because in July the Executive announced the largest public employment offer in history, with more than 40,000 positions. However, not all of them will be for officials with the Muface option, because those in Justice and the Armed Forces have their own model.
“Given, on the one hand, that the new mutualists are increasingly leaning towards the public, as well as the fact that with a historic premium increase (17.12%) the insurers have not wanted to present offers, leaving the bidding deserted “It is time to open a reflection on the mutualism model that is based on three principles: transparency, equity and sustainability,” indicate Public Service sources, who are set to learn the conclusions of a report from the Independent Accountability Authority. Fiscal, scheduled for the end of the year, on the evaluation of expenditure related to administrative mutualism, commissioned by the Council of Ministers and committed to the European Commission.
The Executive points out, however, that one thing is the reflection on the model and another is the new tender in which the Public Service is working for the next two years. Thus, this department continues working on other specifications that satisfy the insurers. “Muface beneficiaries have guaranteed health care until January 31, so there is enough time to launch the second tender; In any case, there are mechanisms in the Public Sector Contracts Law that guarantee assistance under the same conditions until the expired contract is replaced by another,” they point out.
Different sources already indicated last week that the Executive “is considering extending the contract.” A scenario that is not preferred by any of the parties, but that would give the Ministry room to prepare a new concert in which, from the private sector, they indicated that the budget is “fundamental” but in which other conditions that may also influence help to “correct the imbalances in the system”, such as coverage or the high average age of mutual members.
#Government #studying #Muface #officials #choose #public #health #private #insurance
