This Wednesday, the Liberal Initiative returned to advocating structural health care reform that would include a system of universal access to public or private health care, as well as public-private partnership management of hospitals.
According to IL President Rui Rocha, “the healthcare situation in Portugal no longer meets the recommendations” and “structural reform” is needed in this area.
“The way we want it to evolve is that the state should fund access to healthcare, the state should regulate access to healthcare, but it is the people who should choose where they want to be treated. If there is a private hospital that provides the treatment that a person wants, the person should be able to choose to go to the private hospital. (…) With a guarantee: you won’t pay for it anymore,” he defended, taking into account the Liberal health care proposal ahead of the legislative elections that will take place on March 10.
Rui Rocha believed that this model, which was recently presented in parliament and rejected by the “negative voices of the PSD and PS”, would work without additional costs for the state, since the necessary funds were currently already included in the state budget.
“We have a proposal ready, we are immediately moving forward with the same proposal, and I believe that within a year it is possible to transform and prepare all the circumstances so that the country can be transformed in this access to healthcare. It makes sense to have more targeted approaches. For example, the issue of revising public-private partnerships can be advanced in a shorter time,” he said.
At the door of the Beatriz Angelou hospital in Loures, Lisbon district, Rui Rocha emphasized that this health facility is one of the examples where it stopped working under the PPP and “performed worse.”
“So wherever it is possible to resume the public-private partnership model, we are positive about resuming that management model that has been beneficial to the public and we want to see hospitals back in business after this bad decision to cancel the public-private partnership. “…private,” he said, stressing that, in addition to Loures, the situation with hospitals in Braga and Vila Franca de Xira needs to be changed.
The MP stressed that similar models work across Europe “with proven evidence” and accused the Socialist Party of destroying the National Health Service (NHS).
“After the PS spent eight years in government, ending, for example, public-private partnerships, especially here at the Beatrice Angelo Hospital, and seeing that all this had caused harm to the population and that functioning hospitals were no longer functioning. “I believe that the minimum is that whoever is responsible for this takes on his responsibilities and does not try to transfer them to third parties,” he emphasized.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal

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