Putting a price on life - the Spanish health care system under austerity [View all]

[stockholmer]

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/05/08/inenglish/1336478136_259257.html


An illegal immigrant sick with cancer who will no longer receive radiotherapy and chemotherapy. A man with a spinal cord injury who will have to pay for part of his wheelchair and the ambulance that takes him to receive treatment several times a week. A stroke victim who will have to pay for a percentage of the nutritional preparations they receive by catheter.

These are all people with names and faces who will no longer be able to receive standard medical attention or will have problems continuing their medical treatment as a consequence of the government's planned health reforms. Arguing that the current national health system is unsustainable, the government has begun a counter-reformation. It is the inverse of the process put in motion 26 years ago by Socialist minister Ernest Lluch that created the current system and universalized healthcare, increasing coverage to eight million people who until then had remained outside its protective umbrella.

The new system, which the government hopes will save 7.2 billion euros, will restrict health-care access for Spain's 153,000 illegal immigrants to emergency treatment only; create a new co-payment system for pharmaceuticals (which will mean, for example, that for the first time pensioners will have to pay for their medicines); and also includes payment plans for the lending of ortho-prosthetic items such as wheelchairs and for nutrition therapy preparations that many patients need to survive.

"It is a matter of life or death that has a price we cannot afford," says Andrés Piñero, whose daughters, eight-year-old Paula and 14-year-old Marta, both suffer from phenylketonuria (PKU), a congenital disorder that prevents them from metabolizing proteins from food. The girls can only eat certain fruits and vegetables and need nutrition therapy preparations to provide them with calcium, magnesium and other essential nutrients. These cost around 2,000 euros a month - more than 22,000 euros per year, per child.

snip