Price of being well is to lose ‘family doctor’
In a new rule that may well come up against a lot of friction, the government has decided to ‘reorganise access to primary healthcare’. This could sound promising if it didn’t end with the withdrawal of people’s family doctors – but this is the plan, according to reports today: “The government has decided to withdraw family doctors from Portuguese living abroad and from foreigners in Portugal who have not been to an appointment for five years”, explains SIC Notícias this evening.
“This measure was defined by the previous Executive (PS Socialists), but at the time it didn’t go ahead due to opposition from the PSD. Now, the Democratic Alliance (led by the PSD) has revived the initiative and decided to include it in the Emergency Health Plan”.
To be fair, SIC has not really presented this correctly. The measure was not defined by the previous Executive: a measure was defined – one to refuse free healthcare to emigrés, who by dint of living abroad would be eligible for healthcare in their adopted countries.
There was no previous measure to actually kick people off family doctors’ patient lists, particularly people who are legally living, working and paying taxes in Portugal.
Equally dubious is that the price of being well, in the eyes of this government, is to no longer deserve access to a family doctor (if you already have one, of course).
This is the nub of the issue: well over 1.5 million citizens do not have a family doctor. Thus, this ‘wizard idea’ of how to make more space available – and blame it on PS Socialists.
Adding salt into this miserable wound is, apparently, that this rule will come into force on … April 1.
According to SIC’s report, the ‘new’ plan allows for “pregnant women, the chronically ill and children up to the age of 12” to be among those who will now have priority access when it comes to being allocated a family doctor (at the expense of emigrés and ‘foreigners’).
As the station concedes, when PS Socialists suggested this ‘change’, to affect emigrés, PSD social democrats took up a position of righteous indignation, along with emigré associations, and the measure was not adopted.
Whether this even more radical measure is adopted remains to be seen – but it is a ‘funny’ (as in not-funny-at-all) way of rewarding people who have managed to stay well for the last five years…In fact, you could say it is making (April) Fools out of them …
