The latest idea by the Minister of Health, Mónica García, to try to “solve” the medical conflict over the Framework Statute has backfired. García, who has been campaigning all week about his efforts and those of his team to “end the strikes”, selling that “the will to agree with the Medical Strike Committee is broad and transversal” and sending the message to the medical unions that, if the conflict is not unblocked, it is basically their fault, has informed the union organizations today that has summoned representatives of the Platform of Patient Organizations (PoP) “as independent observers” for the meeting next Tuesday, April 7.
On Monday, the Strike Committee received an email, to which LA RAZÓN has had access, from the general directorate of Professional Planning, led by Miguel Ángel Mañez, in which it was informed that, “continuing with the guidelines agreed upon in the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System (Cisns)” the Ministry of Health proposed “the participation of two patient organizations as mediators to perform independent observer functions” within the framework of the negotiating process. The two organizations were the Spanish Patients Forum (FEP) and the Patient Organizations Platform (PoP).
The first surprise of the committee was the reference to the consensus in Cisns, when The idea of proposing patients as mediators had been a specific initiative by two Health Ministers (from the Basque Country and the Canary Islands) –which was initially rejected by the minister- and it had not been voted on or accepted by the rest of the autonomies at last Friday’s meeting. What’s more, both the Community of Madrid and Extremadura have sent letters this week to Mónica García to reject the intermediation of patients in the negotiation process with the medical profession.
The second, that Health imposed this mediation unilaterally, breaking the commitment that the entity or organization chosen was chosen by consensus of the parties. And, third and most important, that the Ministry focused its attention on this mediation resource without addressing the essential matters that the committee had asked of them for this second meeting after months without contact, that is, documentation and real proposals.
Therefore, as this newspaper has learned, since The committee have officially responded to the Ministry of Mónica García requesting a postponement of the meeting, “as the necessary documentation for its adequate preparation by the social side has not been available to date.” In addition, the organizations that make it up have pointed out that “any attendee invited to participate in the meetings, outside the Ministry and the Strike Committee, must be previously agreed upon by both parties.”
Why PoP and not others?
Between Monday and today, Health has opted for the PoP as an “independent observer” in the negotiation process, eliminating the Forum from the equation. The movement is better understood if it is analyzed together with these two facts. Last Thursday, one day before the Cisns plenary session, the president of the PoP, Carina Escobar, declared in front of the Ministry of Health that the patients were “suffering this strike out of confusion, without understanding why the Framework Statute is not enough for our doctors”. “We ask that avenues of constructive dialogue be established and that they not go through further avenues of strike,” he noted. Likewise, the representative made herself available to the parties to help unblock the situation.
For his part, the president of the EFF, Andoni Lorenzo Garmendia, He published on Sunday on his social networks a reflection on the “concern” that produced “the proposal of the Ministry of Health of the Basque Country (PNV) of delegate the mediation of a labor dispute to a patient organization”. Among other aspects, it highlighted that “a labor negotiation is a highly complex process that requires experts in law and labor relations. Delegating this responsibility to a patient association, whose mission is healthcare and not legal, generates unnecessary uncertainty. The person harmed by it cannot be placed at the center of a conflict. Where is their independence. The patient is the center and reason of the system, the proper goal of the resolution of this conflict.”
The question of why Health has opted for PoP answers itself.