translated from Spanish: Health, social demand and government anti-response

Several studies and surveys have consistently shown that health is one of the priority demands for the population. If, despite the insistence of the Equality Institute, prioritization was still in doubt, it is sufficient to go through the different manifestations that have occurred in the context of the so-called social outburst to meet thousands of posters, posters, performace and scratches, that relere the urgency of having a health system that ensures decent, timely, quality and free care. This demand was made in the recent communal consultation of the citizens and has been included in the request of Social Unity and the various groups of workers in the health sector, professional colleges and opposition political parties.
The call expressed in various forms is to move forward for equal health and end abuses, seeking to end the differences between rich and poor, to end abuses of the Isapre and for-profit in health, for example, in the “out-of-pocket” overspending – that each person should do at the time of care- on medications.
The demand for quality health has resulted in concrete proposals by the various social actors managing to reach agreements in the central. The CUT, public sector workers, professional colleges and opposition political parties have proposed moving towards a Universal Public System working in land-based establishment networks (Primary Health Care) .

It is about changing a model based on disease, which today gives rise to profit and the business of treatments, for a strong emphasis on socially constructed health, with strong components of health promotion and disease prevention, understanding that for quality health must be worked out with the community and other sectors of the State in the territories themselves.
Let’s take an example to simplify. We don’t get anything out of having good treatment systems for lead poisonings or other contaminants, if we are not able to assure the population that they will live in healthy, fit places and that they will have a health system that is monitoring and controlling those sanitary conditions.
The Universal Public Health System cannot be left alone in a discursive demand, but must be fully funded. In this vein, there also seems to be agreement among these actors that it is necessary to pool the 7% that today is of social security, in a single Fund, which I will call Fonasa 2.0. In that fund, in addition to all the contributors, the State must contribute in increasing quantities. Isapre are modified towards supplementary insurance, but 7% of social security is no longer managed. During the first time of transition, this Fonasa 2.0 could operate as a National Health Insurance as proposed by the Medical College and the School of Public Health of Chile some time ago. Model change must be rapidly realized, primary care universalized, its funding and action improved. In the long run, funding will have to change towards general taxes, as is the case in England or Spain. It is about building the same system for all people funded in solidarity.
Unfortunately, the Government of the President, Sebastián Piñera, makes a deaf ear also in this area and instead of accepting the transformative proposals that would allow us to move towards decent health, insists on responding with a privatization agenda that entails proposals that go totally in the opposite direction of what society demands. Thus, instead of delivering more resources to the public system to eliminate waiting lists, a bill – Protected Middle Class – is sent that seeks to transfer more resources to private ones, solving the problem to very few people. What is worrying is that it seems to be a more media agenda than content, because so far in relation to the famous “great reform al Fonasa” the President and the Minister of Health, Jaime Mañalich, have only made announcements that do not end up in concrete in proposals legislative or public policy.
Of what little we know, the “isaprization” of FONASA, an institution to which it is intended to give powers to act as Isapre, which would allow it to make “plans” with certain costs, seems to be of great concern, going to a route already known and that would allow us to wonder how long will it take for this new system to start discriminating as well? The answer we already know and Chile has mobilized against it strongly: “No to profit and abuse in health”.
Chile awoke and in this new dawn showed us the face of a country with a health system that does not guarantee the real right to a decent life, achieving something that looked distant on the horizon, sitting at the same table the different actors in the area and agreeing in a propu that puts the urgency of reform at the center. If the Government insists on its privatization “anti-response”, not only history will judge, but also the people who demand a fair and dignified health every day.

The content poured into this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish

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