Canary Islands, among the autonomies with the greatest health privatization

Madrid, Catalonia, Balearic and Canary Islands are the autonomous communities with a
greater degree of privatization of its health servicesaccording to the eighth report
Healthcare Privatization in the Autonomous Communitiescarried out by the Federation of Associations for the Defense of Public Health (FADSP).

«One of our main concerns is the great variability that exists between the health services of the autonomous communities. Privatization is worrying, although it does not occur in the same way in all the autonomous communities”, commented the FADSP spokesman, Marciano Sánchez-Bayle, during the presentation of the work.

In this sense, the report indicates that the communities with an intermediate degree of privatization are Galicia, Andalusia, the Valencian Community, Aragón, Castilla y León, Murcia, the Basque Country, Asturias, Navarra and La Rioja; while those with a low degree of privatization are Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha and Cantabria.

If these data are compared with those obtained in previous reports, it can be seen that in the group with the lowest level of privatization, only Extremadura remains. Similarly, the largest privatization observed in the last two reports are Aragón, which increases seven places; Murcia, which increases six; Castilla y Léon (4 places), Valencia and Andalusia (3 places each); and Galicia, which increases one position.

Regarding the lower privatization of its health systems, this year's FADSP report shows a decrease of six posts in Navarra; five from the Basque Country; three from Castilla-La Mancha; two from La Rioja; and a post from Asturias and Cantabria.

«Privatization has increased in all the autonomous communities and, in addition, the result and the movements in the classification only reflect the greater or lesser intensity that each autonomous community has reached. As is usual in studies on the health systems of the autonomous communities, a great inequality between them is observed, with the ratio between the maximum and minimum score standing at 2.81, the highest found in all the reports”, has Sánchez-Bayle emphasized.

Finally, the FADSP spokesperson warned that the data only includes the first year of the pandemic and, therefore, does not include data related to the use of covid-19 funds, "as well as the fact that during the The same situation has worsened notably in some of the autonomous communities, such as Madrid.