PCP accuses government of “wanting to open” door “opened by PS” to degradation of social network

PCP General Secretary Paulo Raimundo accused the PSD/SDS-PP government on Thursday of “wanting to open the door” that he said the previous socialist leader had opened to “the degradation, dismantling and privatization of parts of the SNS.”

Paulo Raimundo closed this afternoon a public hearing organised by the PCP in Lisbon entitled “Urgent measures for the National Health Service”, calling for the need to “save social networks”, which “are the cornerstone” of access to healthcare as “a right granted to everyone, regardless of means and age”.

“The previous government opened the door, and the current one wants to open the door to degradation, dismantling and privatization of parts of the SNS,” he accused.

According to the communist leader, there is a “major operation underway, subordinated to the profitable strategy of those who make disease a business.”

For Paulo Raimundo, SNS “is an investment, not an expense,” and he reiterated an idea he said he had already defended during the PCP initiative.

“This is not to demonize the private sector, but that is the way things are. For the private sector, the more diseases, the better. For society, the more prevention, the better, the less diseases, the better,” he compared.

While acknowledging that the SNS is going through a “particularly difficult moment,” the PCP general secretary defended the need for “extraordinary measures,” recalling that in April the party presented a program to ensure these urgent response measures.

“All morning the news was, ‘Oh, there’s an accounting operation to transfer 100 million euros from Aguas de Portugal to the government to disguise the national debt.’ Scandal. In fact, last night in my neighborhood no one slept because of this scandal,” he joked.

Paulo Raimundo wondered why the fact that eight billion euros, half of the SNS state budget, was not going to “go into private business” should not be subject to scandal, not be revealed on television news programmes or not provoke debate.

Condemning the “chronic underfunding and lack of investment,” Paulo Raimundo cited as “proof of the wrong path” the fact that “the last 10 years have been the only ones in 60 years in which the capacity of public hospitals has not been increased in hospital beds.”

“And it is a scandal that state hospitals, which have reduced the number of beds, are now hiring private beds,” he condemned.

For the PCP leader, “health care cannot tolerate interruptions,” and he believes it is necessary to put an end to the closure of services that were presented as temporary but later “became permanent.”