How does the public health situation affect the increase in private health insurance contracts? This is the question asked by the leaders of the Federation of Associations for the Defense of Public Health (Fadsp), which focuses especially on primary care.
And the results are clear: the critical situation of health centers, the level closest to citizens, has meant in recent years that citizens have moved to private healthcare, through the contracting of insurance. It has happened, to one extent or another, in all the autonomous communities, a fact that has resulted in delays and waiting lists also in private consultations.
At the moment, 20.45% of the population has private insurance, with variability between communities. The most is Madrid (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 (increase of 2.29%) and, above all, among those over 40.
This is one of the results of the report Private insurance and delays in primary care presented yesterday after cross-checking the data on primary care from all of Spain, delays and the increase in private insurance, according to the president of Fadsp, Marciano Sánchez Bayle, who assures that for every day of delay in getting an appointment at primary care, 289,000 people “switch” to private insurance.
And what’s more, if the appointments for these consultations were given within the next 48 hours, as the associations for the defense of public health demand, more than 1.6 million people would leave private insurance (it would drop by 3 .56%).
Sánchez Bayle remarked that this “is generating very important problems in the accessibility of the public to primary care in the necessary times”. For this reason, 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, which is a “clear factor of inequity”. From the FADSP they assure that “they are not against” anyone who wishes to have private insurance”. But they suggest that this coverage “should not be subsidized by public funds”.
On average, the delay in Spain for a primary care consultation is 7.76 days, which ranges between 11.59 days of delay in Catalonia and 5.34 in the Basque Country. During the last two years, the regions where the wait for primary school has increased the most are Madrid (5.24 days), La Rioja (5) and the Canary Islands (4.32). The average in all communities is 3.21 days.
