Let's support doctors in the fight

The strike for wages and labor rights is also a battle for a quality public health system. for all workers and the people.

Strikes and mobilizations for rightss

The recent call for two days of strike and demonstrations in various autonomous communities marks a turning point in the health crisis that the Spanish State is going through.. What the official media usually present as a “union dispute” it is, actually, the symptom of a systemic disease: the attempt to deepen the conversion of a fundamental right into a market niche for the benefit of a handful of capitalist businessmen.

The planned days of protest are not an isolated event, but the culmination of a malaise that has been brewing in Primary Care centers and large hospitals. The mobilizations called include: total strikes, rallies in front of the headquarters of the Health Departments, assemblies at the doors of hospitals, seeking unity of all health personnel (nursing, cellars, technicians) Y, especially, with users and neighborhood movements. In Barcelona - where there was already a strike 8 Y 9 from December- there will be a mobilization on Wednesday 14 from 10:30 a.m., from Plaza Sant Jaume to the Parliament and on Thursday 15 from the ICS corporate center to the headquarters of the Unió Catalana d'Hospitals association. The extension of these strikes to multiple communities demonstrates that the problem is structural and transcends regional borders..

A programmed deterioration

Behind the strike headlines, There is a daily reality of professional and healthcare degradation. The conflict is based on two destructive pillars. The first is the deterioration of benefits: Waiting lists for specialists and surgeries have ceased to be an exception and have become the norm.. The average attention time in Primary has been reduced to a few minutes, preventing decent and safe medical practice. Second, working and salary conditions: Doctors working in the Spanish State are among the lowest paid in Europe in relation to the cost of living and responsibility assumed. The temporality of the contracts, Excessive guards without adequate rest and lack of substitutions generate a situation of “burnout” massive that is emptying the system of its best professionals, those who are forced to emigrate.

Health is a right, not a business

We denounce that the system is being sabotaged from within to justify its complete privatization. The advance of the mixed system and concessions to private companies are not “efficiency solutions”, but rather mechanisms for transferring public money into private hands. Every euro that is not invested in technology, infrastructure or personnel in the public, It is a euro that ends up feeding the business of private insurance companies. Budget cuts and disinvestment are direct attacks on public health. The public service is made precarious so that users, desperate for lack of appointments, are forced to take out private insurance. This is the roadmap for budget disinvestment: defund to privatize. The “private management” It is a trap.

The responsible

They do not exist “innocent managers” in this conflict. The Autonomous Governments are the direct executors of the cuts, responsible for the precariousness in their territories and the lack of political will to protect healthcare. The Central Government, today led by Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) and its partners, supposedly, “progressives” and before the PP, for maintaining spending ceilings and laws that facilitate the entry of private capital in the management of public services. Ultimately, The person responsible for the deterioration is a system that sees an opportunity for profit in the disease.. Capitalism cannot guarantee universal, quality health because its driving force is accumulation., not human well-being. Health under this system is another commodity and not a right of working people..

For a great movement in defense of public health

To win this fight, The medical strike must be the driving force of something much bigger. It is not enough to have isolated strikes or corridor negotiations that only put “patches” temporary. It is urgent to call for the formation of a great national movement of struggle that unifies all communities, to all health workers and users. Fragmentation only benefits governments. It is essential to unite the struggle of doctors with that of neighborhood platforms and the working class in general. The defense of health is the defense of our own life. The majority union centers must convene democratic assemblies in the workplace, to show solidarity with the doctors' struggle and establish a list of demands for the entire working class, with a staggered plan of struggle and general strike so that the crisis is paid for by those who generated it, that is, the capitalists and not those who suffer from it, What are the workers and the people?. All the support to the doctors in the fight! Health 100% public, universal and quality!