Health, market and primary care

Abstract

At the core of the genome of Primary Care lies its vocation for universality and its rejection of the logic of the market. The purpose of the primary care is to solve the health need, even if not demanded, and protecting the patient from the excess of the medical activity. Countries with a strong PC achieve better health outcomes, greater equity and lower costs. However, for the last two decades, politicians have done practically nothing to empower and strengthen Spanish PC. To do this, they must reinforce their essential characteristics: accessibility, continuity, versatility and coordination. Gradually abandoned by the citizens with a higher level of education, income status and greater political and media influence (sociological skimming), our PC is further weakened thanks to the invaluable collaboration of politicians who, for many years, have been strangling its budget and offering to these influential citizens private health care alternatives, without PC, financed with public resources (“Mutualismo Administrativo”) or fiscally incentivized (private health insurance). It seems that Spanish politicians want a PC degenerated into charity for those who don't have other choices. Is it because many of them are part of those influential sectors of population?