Yolanda Díaz confronts her model of defense of public health with that of Feijóo's "save yourself who can"

Yolanda Díaz has entered fully this Saturday into the debate on the state of public health in Spain.

Just six days after a massive demonstration went through the streets of the capital in defense of this service in Madrid —which has kept primary care doctors on strike since November—, the second vice president of the Government has called to preserve the one that has defined as "the jewel in the crown of the welfare state" in the face of a "deliberate" proposal by the Popular Party and its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to "dismantle public health and turn citizens' lives into business."

“The PP model is called save whoever can”, she stated during an act with experts, users and representatives of the sector held at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid.

In front of a hundred people and after focusing on the precariousness in which 32% of the professionals work, often with contracts that are renewed every two months, she stressed, the vice president has advocated urgently presenting a "immediate renewal plan of all the templates" sanitary.

In addition, she has called for "comprehensively relocating mental health" in the public health network and putting primary care at "the center of the system", in addition to incorporating oral and optical health into the universal system.

The debate comes after last Sunday, some 250,000 people, according to data from the Government Delegation, took to the streets of Madrid to defend the public system.

Currently, more than 4,200 family doctors and some 700 primary care paediatricians have been on strike since November 21 and negotiations with the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso continue to be blocked.

The physicians claim, among other issues, 10 minutes to see a patient without this depending on the voluntariness of the professionals themselves to take extra shifts.

“The jewel in the crown of the welfare state in Spain is called public health.

I make a staunch defense of it.

Right now we have a real danger, it's called Feijóo, it's called PP”, Díaz warned before affirming that Galicia, with the popular leader at the helm, was “a laboratory of ideas for Madrid's health”.

“Mr. Feijoo came to propose a rate for people who used health emergencies.

The response of the Galicians in the streets was so overwhelming that they had to withdraw it", accused the head of Labor before stressing that the PP model has to do with "dismantling public health services", a proposal "also linked to healthcare businesses.

“The PP model is called 'every man for himself'.

Whoever has resources, let him be cured, and whoever doesn't, what can we do?

they would have tried harder.

It is not about effort, it is about rights, universal health ”, the vice president cried.

Díaz has proposed from Sumar a "great democratic contract for public health" and has reiterated that this is already being written "in the streets" of the country.

"This is the urgent task in defense of the jewel in the crown and in defense of a dignified life (...) Let us know that we have Alberto Núñez Feijóo in front of us with a deliberate proposal to dismantle public health and turn our lives into a business .

Faced with this model, let us defend a model based on rights”, the vice president defended.

Led by Rafael Cofiño, former Director General of Public Health in Asturias and coordinator of the working group of his health and mental health project, Díaz has spent months outlining the Sumar program, the platform that he promotes with an eye on the general elections. , whose conclusions have not yet been made public.

Podemos affirms that Sumar does not want an agreement until the summer

In recent days, both Podemos and Yolanda Díaz have exchanged messages about the course of the negotiations to form a unitary candidacy for the general elections at the end of the year.

After Irene Montero urged the vice president on Thursday to define the process "as soon as possible" and pointed out that "they were late", the Sumar leader responded on Friday that her team is already meeting with "all political parties, including We can”, a matter on which until then it had not publicly ruled despite the insistent claims of the formation of Ione Belarra.

Díaz asked the parties to "let her platform work" and appealed for discretion in order to reach an agreement.

"If we want to add, let's do it well, with discretion and with love," she settled.

"His team has informed us that they do not plan to close an electoral agreement for the general elections until the summer," the party's Organization secretary, Lilith Verstrynge, has pressed again, asked about these conversations.

Less than three months after the start of the campaign for regional and municipal governments —a factor that complicates the completion of the negotiations with the political forces that are presenting themselves in that process—, the Secretary of State for the 2030 Agenda has once again asked Díaz from Seville, where the formation holds an interparliamentary meeting, to support the candidacies of Podemos and Unidas Podemos in those elections.

"We respect Yolanda's times, we respect the time she needs to articulate her party and Podemos has always been and will always continue to be where it has been, which is working for unity," Belarra said in statements to the media in Móstoles.

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