The PSOE embraces the banner of health to wage the political battle with the PP

The Socialists have seen the ball pumped into the area coming and have launched to look for the shot.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
14 February 2023 Tuesday 04:28
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The PSOE embraces the banner of health to wage the political battle with the PP

The Socialists have seen the ball pumped into the area coming and have launched to look for the shot. The success of the Madrid demonstration in defense of public health – which three months after the previous one points out that the concern for health care is structural, not temporary – has been interpreted by the PSOE as an indication of a favorable framework for the dispute politics with the PP, and yesterday, the press conference after Ferraz's executive was monothematic.

To give the message more packaging, it was not the Minister of Education and spokesperson for the party, Pilar Alegría, who was in charge of appearing, but the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, who was Minister of Health of Andalusia from 2004 to 2013. The message It was unequivocal: Spanish public health bears the stamp of the PSOE, he argued. On the one hand, it has been socialist governments that have universalized and consolidated the national health system and those that have guaranteed that its resources allow it to be at the forefront of research and new equipment, she explained. On the other, it has been the determination of the coalition government that has recovered investment in health, after the years of austerity of the PP governments, and has ensured that the economic slowdown of the pandemic did not have a correlate in public investment in health. Montero placed the figure on the frontispiece of her appearance: between the last budget of Mariano Rajoy and that of Pedro Sánchez in 2021, the growth in health was 145%. Of course, she specified that not all the money that the general administration of the State allocates to the autonomous communities ends up having an impact on the public health system, since it is a transferred competence.

And there he set the battle. He alluded to the intervention of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, at the Goya gala, when she qualified the actress Eulàlia Ramon, widow of Carlos Saura –who thanked public health–, which was a center " public-private” the one who attended the filmmaker. Montero stressed that behind private management there is always a profit motive, as well as a "negative selection of patients." And he stressed that the PP strategy seeks a "weakening" of the system and, therefore, a progressive "detachment" of the citizenry for the sake of the "normalization" of the referral to private health.

The minister summarized the programs to improve the national health service and mental health, as well as the increase in investment so that universities offer more places in medicine studies and the growth of MIR places. Everything to finally categorize the PSOE as the party sworn in defense of free, universal public health against the PP model, which seeks to divert citizens towards private insurance. "The PSOE is the main guarantee that there is not a public system for the poor and a private insurance system for the privileged." In any case, she did not say that the PSOE was planning to reform Law 15/97 of José María Aznar, which allows the entry of private companies into public health.

From the PP two strategies were seen. While Ayuso traced the reaction of November and described the march as instrumental and a mirror of the "frustration" of the left, from Genoa, Borja Sémper extended the problem to the whole of Spain and demanded to remove it from the political struggle. The pandemic, he explained, has deteriorated primary care, emergencies and waiting lists in all communities, for which he asked not to enter the "and you more" due to a situation that also "questions" the central government.

Giving the demonstration a solely Madrid dimension "does not reflect reality," said Sémper, who denied that health was the "Achilles heel" of the PP. And although he acknowledged that in the protest on Sunday there were "many people" of "good will", he agreed with Ayuso that there was an "obvious intention" to direct it "against certain politicians" and not "in favor of the resolution" of a problem that it must be approached “collectively”.

After a very difficult week for the Government, due to the inconclusive reform of the only yes is yes law, Ferraz has seen in the mobilized crowd the opportunity to put Genoa on the defensive and parades with the health flag.