Spain vacillates on Health Care, Medicos del Mundo denounces

Spain is vacillating about a mandatory health care system. Particularly toward the weakest: children of immigrants, for whom the reform enacted last year in the wake of the economic crisis on the contrary foresaw obligatory assistance, as is for other groups. Medicos del Mundo, a non-governmental health organization (NGO), denounces them because they are fighting to guarantee health care for everyone.

According to the organization, in the communities where the group is present (Aragona, Baleari, Castilla-La Mancha, Pais Valencia, Madrid and Navarra) “numerous cases of rights violations” were registered and they say they have received complaints from other communities. According to Medicos del Mundo “there is a lack of political will to clarify the gray areas” of the royal decree approved by the government last year which modified the National Health Care System. In particular the organization affirms that in Pamplona, the son of a Romanian family was not taken care of, meanwhile in the city of Toledo public doctors refused health care to the child of a Moroccan family. In Yepes (Toledo), 2 children (1 and 2 year old Romanian nationals) were not admitted for medical treatment with the excuse that “they did not have any rights because neither they nor their parents had a foreign identification number,” the healthcare authorities explained, as reported by the NGO.

The organization highlights that when people who do not have a government health care card get sick, they are accepted in some hospitals only if they agree to sign for the responsibility of paying and days after hospitalization they receive “a hefty bill at home.” In Toledo for example, the Viergen de la Salud Hospital would have sent an invoice for 3,000 Euro for delivering a baby, “when pregnant women should be completely covered by national health care.” According to MdM, health clinics like Fundación Jiménez Díaz in Madrid invoiced for emergency medical care for chronic patients.