Health Minister promises to bring unions the best she has to offer

Health Minister Ana Paula Martins pledged this Friday to bring to negotiations with unions next week “the best” that the government can offer in terms of revaluing and honoring the careers of these professionals.

During the questioning of the head of PSD/CDS-PP, which took place this Friday in Parliament at the request of BE, about the health emergency plan, Ana Paula Martins was asked about the negotiations with the unions representing professionals in the health sector.

“Our answer is: yes, we do want to negotiate. At the moment these are special professions, from September they will become other general professions,” began the answer to PCP MP Paula Santos.

According to the Health Minister, the reason for postponing the meetings, which were originally scheduled for the week ending this Friday, was not only due to “agenda issues”, but also to another aspect.

“The government – the whole government, not just health – is doing an in-depth assessment with the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration so that we can present to the meetings next week the best we can offer to professionals, not only in re-evaluating their careers, but also in their dignity,” said Ana Paula Martins.

Communist Paula Santos made a diagnosis that she considers “very worrying” about the health situation, referring to cases where consumers did not have a family doctor or very long waiting times, which she said was a “reflection of the shortage of health workers.”

“We look at what the government is proposing and the interventions and we don’t see any serious commitment from the government to value health workers,” he lamented.

During the debate, which saw the first test of the traffic light system that will regulate the time of MPs’ intervention, SDP, Čega, IL and SDS-PP joined BE several times in leading the PS for the last nine years, making the blockers jointly responsible for the situation in which SNS found itself.

As for the PSD, former President of the Order of Doctors Miguel Guimarães criticized what the “socialist government of António Costa, supported by this invention,” left behind in health care, citing as examples “more than a million people without family doctors,” waiting times for consultations, operations and treatments, “70 thousand patients in need of palliative care and without access” and a medical emergency.

“Why did the socialist government abandon the welfare state? Because he stopped liking the best thing about Portugal: the people,” he said.

Regarding Chega, Pedro Pinto believed that “the state that SNS has reached is the mistake of PS, PCP and BE” and that they should “apologize to the Portuguese.”

“What is the difference between the PS government and the SDP? None,” he accused.

Mario Amorim Lopez of Illinois called on the left to make an “act of remorse” for the state of health and said the sector’s budget “cannot be subject to political cycles” and that it should be multi-year.

Regarding the CDS-PP, João Almeida asked whether the blockades did not consider the need for an “emergency plan to combat the hypocrisy of the BE”, which supported the PS government for nine years, during which “tragic decisions” were taken that still reverberate today, since the left decided to “deceive the Portuguese”.

In response to the PS report, the BE leader accused the socialists of “sacrificing social media for their power strategies.”

“A few months ago, the PS had an absolute majority, but where was the government when it came to assessing careers in this fight to save SNS?”

Susana Correia of the PS accused the PSD/CDS-PP government of insisting on “attacking the PS government without the courage to govern”, denouncing that the health emergency plan makes no reference to either health workers or cost partners.