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In a book entitled “An experience of modern social democracy”, with the Porto Editora seal and which is presented today in Lisbon, Cavaco Silva reviews various works and moments of his governance as prime minister, such as Expo-98, the Cultural Center of Belém or the Vasco da Gama Bridge, also dedicating a sub-chapter to the policy that was followed in the area of health.
“The recent political-ideological options against the private sector of medicine, regardless of any concern for social justice, or even for the defense of the public interest, have been added to the under-financing of the health system and the reduction of weekly hours of state employees for 35 hours -one of the biggest errors of political power-, translated into a real attack on the National Health Service, through the marked deterioration in the quality of the services provided to users ”, he argues.
Criticism of the current moment in the Health sector, without ever crossing with the pandemic crisis of Covid-19, contrasts with the praise of the policies for the sector carried out since the first of its three governments, in 1985.
“My first Government, which took office in November 1985, given the anemia suffered by our health system, which had degraded the quality of the services provided to citizens, gave health policy, from the first moment, a special attention “, he emphasizes.
According to the former leader of the Executive and the PSD, “the interest of the users of the services to which the State must ensure access to health care was adopted as a major guideline, in the face of the barrier of corporate interests that prevailed then” .
“For me, the primacy that social democracy confers on the human person determined, without any error, that the State should guarantee that any person who needed medical attention could never stop being treated due to lack of economic resources,” he defends.
And because Portugal is a “country of scarce resources” and health expenditures are “increasingly higher”, priority was given to the correct use of human and material resources, the provision of the country with adequate medical and hospital coverage and the opening from the provision of health care to the private sector and the social sector, without which it would not be possible to guarantee to all Portuguese the right to health protection with quality services “, and hospitals have also been subjected to “modern management standards”.
Cavaco recalls that, after the 1989 constitutional review, a new Basic Health Law was approved, which “put an end to the trend towards the nationalization of medicine in Portugal and opened the provision of health care to the private sector, without calling It provokes the role of the State as guarantor of the access of all citizens to health ”.
“His contribution to improving healthcare and bringing Portugal closer to the most developed countries of the European Community explains that the law has been in force for 29 years, resisting nine governments, five of which are from the Socialist Party”, Points out.
After pointing out the construction of “six large hospitals” from scratch – Vila Real, Guimarães, Matosinhos, Leiria, Almada and Amadora Sintra -, the former head of Government highlights the “special attention” that has been given to areas such as the “humanization of services, maternal, newborn and child health and the fight against drug addiction and AIDS ”.
“The intense effort made by the Government in my ten years as Prime Minister, in line with modern social democracy, aimed to provide all Portuguese, in conditions of justice and equity, better quality health services,” he concludes. .
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