“What is at stake is the financing of secured access, which, therefore, will guarantee users access to health care, under the same conditions from a cost point of view that they have today, while allowing users to choose,” Roy Rocha said.
Arriving at Expo Bayrada, in Oliveira do Bairro, Aveiro region, the IL president told reporters that the party’s proposal “in more detail” would be presented next week, but added that one of the measures is the user’s possibility to choose between different health systems.
“It is a model that focuses, on the one hand, on the user, which is fundamental, and on the other hand, that focuses on recalling all the solutions available in Portugal, whether public, in the field of social solidarity, or private solutions,” he defended.
In his opinion, “the possibility of choice is fundamental, in a time of crisis all the possibilities that exist in a country are called upon and that the ultimate beneficiary is the user.”
Roy Rocha considered that “the enormous problem of access to health care cannot be solved with specific measures,” which requires a change of approach and “putting the user at the center of political decisions.”
“It is clear that health professionals are very important, everything is very important, but there can be nothing more important than access to health care for users and this is failing massively in Portugal,” he noted.
For example, he referred to “the need for people who go to the door of a health center at 4 in the morning, not to get to the family doctor, but to make an appointment”, as he said he saw in Algueirão-Mím Martins, the parish in the municipality of Sintra.
“And counseling will take place when possible. This is frequent and true in many other health centres. We know that there are more than 1.5 million Portuguese who do not have a family doctor,” he said.
