Urgent Call for Action: Safeguarding Spain’s National Health System

The evident inefficiencies of our National Health System (SNS) have jeopardized one of the vital pillars for social cohesion and the welfare state, dragging patients and professionals.

More than four million people on waiting lists, primary care collapsed, a system overwhelmed by the pandemic and a society that looks expectantly towards this ruling class far removed, at times, from the pain of the street.

At this hour, what more legitimate concern could our politicians have than the best possible healthcare?

The light has changed in this post-electoral scenario, in which the tension has swept away all paths of consensus and time seems to have stopped. It is a luxury that we cannot afford.

The problem is no longer what is happening, which is also happening, but what awaits us around the corner.

With the largest generation in history knocking on the doors of retirement, the challenge of chronic patients in Spain has just loomed – the current 20 million patients, to whose care three quarters of the health resources are allocated, represent already 80% of visits to the GP-.

And while the peak of the population pyramid gains weight, the base falls from our hands. Stopping the brain drain is another of the great challenges: we need to retain our professionals, who are so magnificently educated.

So much so that we run the risk of becoming a training center for the rest of Europe -although there are no official data, it is estimated that almost 30,000 Spanish doctors and nurses practice outside the country.

A strategy is urgently needed that grants flexibility and resources to a SNS that should focus on prevention and technology.

The public-private collaboration model, woven for more than 20 years of consensus and which has made Spain an international benchmark, requires attention and repair.

Our memory is so light that some have already forgotten the enormous effort made by private healthcare during the pandemic, thanks to which we were able, together, to face the Covid crisis.

On the brink of that abyss the big parties managed to find themselves. In recent months we have also heard one another agree on the diagnosis of an exhausted SNS -this was confirmed in one of the last Circle Debates held in May in Madrid, and on the call for a State Pact for the Health. There is no more delay.

It is time to work to reverse the degradation of the system and assume the challenge of shielding free and universal public health from ideological fluctuations. The moment demands vision and responsibility.