How does the public health situation affect the increase in the contracting of private health insurance? That is the question asked by those responsible for the Federation of Associations for the Defense of Public Health (Fadsp), focused especially on primary care.
And the results are clear: the critical situation of health centers, the level closest to the citizens, has meant in recent years a transfer of citizens to private health, through the contracting of insurance. It has happened, to a greater or lesser extent, in all the autonomous communities, which has resulted in delays and waiting lists also in private consultations.
At this time, 20.45% of the population has private insurance, with great variability between communities, with Madrid being the most (38.11%), followed by Catalonia (32.82%) and the Balearic Islands (30 ,10%); and the least, Navarra with almost 11%. These percentages have been increasing for years, especially after the pandemic (2.29% increase) and, above all, in those over 40 years of age.
This is one of the results of the report Private insurance and delays in primary care presented yesterday after crossing the data on primary care from all over Spain, delays and the increase in private insurance, according to the president of Fadsp, Marciano Sánchez Bayle, who assures that for each day of delay in getting an appointment in primary care, 289,000 people “switch” to private insurance.
And even more so, if the appointments for these consultations were given in the following 48 hours, as demanded by the associations for the defense of public health, more than 1.6 million people would leave private insurance (it would drop by 3.56%) .
The average delay in primary care was 7.76 days in 2022 and increased by an average of 3.21 days since 2019. Sánchez Bayle stressed that this “is generating very important problems in the accessibility of the public to primary care in the necessary times”. Therefore, he asks that waiting times “be reduced to 48 hours.”
Sánchez Bayle explained that there is also a relationship between GDP per capita and people who have private insurance, resulting in a “clear factor of inequality.” From the Fadsp they assure “not to be against” that whoever wishes to have private insurance. However, they suggest that this coverage “is not subsidized by public funds.”
On average, the delay in Spain for a primary care consultation is 7.76 days, which ranges from 11.59 days in Catalonia to 5.34 in the Basque Country. In the last two years, the regions in which the wait in primary care has increased the most are Madrid (5.24 days), La Rioja (5) and the Canary Islands (4.32). The average in all the communities is 3.21 days.
