Controversies continue regarding the management of public health in Andalusia. Rectifications of decrees, agreements with health workers that become a dead letter, resignations and revolving doors, private health care contracts put into question and hiring, such as the one announced this Monday – 2,100 covid reinforcement health workers will be incorporated into the workforce during one year and with a commitment to continuity – by the Minister of Health, Catalina Garciawhich outrage the health unions.
Nothing falls well anymore. The power plants find these contracts insufficient and, above all, they do not like that the application of the agreements is not discussed with them beforehand or that there is no consensus on the application of the agreements, as reported by CCOO, UGT and CSIF. “A lack of respect,” they considered it this Monday. “Of the 7,000 temporary workers that remain, only a little more than 2,000 will be consolidated.another 3,000 will be used for summer replacements and the other 2,000 will disappear,” UGT reasoned in a statement.
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To fallback.
“We are losing thousands of professionals who have done incredible work in the years of the pandemic, who have a lot of experience and whom we rewarded with a dismissal letter to other health services because we are not going to hire them in ours. Selling as a success the consolidation of only 2,000 makes very clear the interest they have in improving healthcare services,”
The bridges are, of course, deteriorated. For a Government and a president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla (PP), with an absolute majority that sell dialogue as a hallmark, there is no worse letter of introduction than the state of dialogue in public health, which takes up a third of the budget of the Junta de Andalucía every year. There is no social peace in healthcare despite the agreements signed: Next Wednesday, May 22, there are more protests called, due to the “non-compliances”, in this case of the agreement for Primary Care and professional careers.
Even the headquarters, in principle, more inclined to understanding with the Board, such as the Andalusian Medical Union, released a forceful statement last week in which it harshly attacked the counselor. The dissemination by Health of inflated data, far above what family doctors actually charge in Andalusia, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The title of the statement was unequivocal, it couldn’t be more direct: “Catalina García must resign or be dismissed immediately.”
“The Health Minister really thinks that attacking doctors is going to solve the problems of Primary CareOr is it simply that he wants to punish us for not being accommodating with his management? Is this really the path that the Ministry of Health wants to take to solve the problems of Primary Care Medicine? The presidency of the Junta de Andalucía must put an end to this nonsense,” demanded the SMA.
The rest of the unions also consider that what is appropriate is their termination. CSIF, usually cautious, also came out last week along the same lines. “They cannot create shadows of doubt about the professional and vocational status of family doctors or MIRs, to exonerate responsibility for an administration that pays worse and is not capable of retaining talent by taking care of its professionals. Someone should take responsibility for an SAS without direction, adrift and without a project to save Primary Care in Andalusia”, this union also demanded last week.
For Antonio Macias, of the UGT health federation in Andalusia, there are numerous reasons for the dismissal of the counselor, of which three stand out. On the one hand, the “temporary staff management disaster“. “Thousands of temporary workers have disappeared, the stock market is not updated, there are promises to renew the seven thousand covid reinforcements and now it is only done at two thousand and for a while.”
On the other hand, he states, “managing waiting lists and delays in Primary Care“. And finally, the “discontent of professionals that has reached levels that had never been reached with the failure to comply with all the agreements that we have pending (stock market, emergencies, primary care, professional career, integration orders,…)”. “There is not a single issue that we deal with that they comply with,” he emphasizes. Macias.
Nothing seems to go well for García, who is on a tightrope.despite the fact that the Government has indeed signed relevant pacts with the unions during its mandate, including the improvement of Primary Care, and that it has allocated more public money than any other previous councilor.
A political problem
The bad thing for the counselor is that health has gone from being a management problem to also becoming a political problem, and of the first order, which It costs President Moreno Bonilla periodic headaches.
The response in the street exists. It is not as intense as in the last years of the PSOE Government, but it is there. And it is collected in the surveys. Even those carried out periodically by the Center for Andalusian Studies (Centra), dependent on the Government of Moreno Bonilla, reveal that, After the strike, an endemic issue in Andalusia, the main problem in this community is the functioning of public health.
Thus, the deterioration, which began with the cuts in the period after the fall of Lehman Brothers, with the socialists in the Junta de Andalucía, continues today.
Moreno Bonilla is not a friend of big changes mid-trip. In the time that he has been president, he has only undertaken, also forced by circumstances, three modifications of his cabinet – beyond the remodeling after the absolute majority of the PP -, according to the count that he has carried out. Public.
All of them have been limited to a change of cards. Due to illness, in the cabinet that he shared with Ciudadanos between 2019 and 2022, he changed to that of the first Minister of the Treasury – he entered Juan Bravo rather Alberto García Valera–. Later, due to the death of Javier Imbrodacoordinated with Ciudadanos his replacement by Manuel Cardenete. And in this legislature, when Marifran Carazo She ran as a candidate for mayor of Granada, which she won, she was also replaced by the current Minister of Public Works Rocio Diaz.
On this occasion, after the departure of his Minister of Agriculture, Carmen Crespo, to Europe, has an ace up its sleeve. He decided to settle that resignation momentarily with the transfer of powers to another councilor, the Minister of the Environment and spokesperson, Ramon Fernandez Pacheco. So, if he wanted to, and it is not at all clear that he wants to, after the European elections on June 9, Moreno would have a relatively easy time appointing a new Minister of Agriculture and, in the process, undertake other modifications that would grease his cabinet.
In the PP, according to the sources consulted by Publicthe conviction is relatively widespread that We have to make “some changes in the Government”, also in Health. There are those who believe that after the European Championships, Moreno will attack them. There are also those who argue that Dismissing García in the middle of the game would imply recognizing that public health has not been well managed in Andalusia, when many efforts have been made, and which, therefore, must continue. In any case, on these issues, beyond the party, there is only one who ultimately decides, which is the president.
“Why Moreno Bonilla supports it?”, asks Macías, from UGT. “Either because he is not aware of the management disaster he is carrying out or because he does not have the slightest interest in public health improving. It can’t be anything else,” he summarizes. Posed in another way and in the form of a question: Would García’s dismissal as head of Health modify the policies?