Luís Montenegro had promised an emergency health plan within 60 days. In the first version of the current PSD/CDS government, it was already clear that this plan was an electoral promise that was not to be fulfilled. At least in the interpretation that such a Plan could be a package of solutions to solve the problems of the SNS, it quickly became clear that it would never be implemented.
The announcement now made by the PSD/CDS Government of the concentration of emergencies at regional level, starting with gynecology and obstetrics emergencies in the Setúbal Peninsula at the beginning of 2026, leaves three more things in sight.
The first is that the PSD/CDS Government Plan for health is not about solving the problems of the SNS, it is about disguising them. The second is that the Government announces as new retread measures, which have already been tried and rejected in the past because they do not work. The third is that the Government uses the problems of the SNS to amputate the SNS itself, removing even more response capacity and creating conditions for the business of those who make profits from the disease to flourish.
One of the effectiveness criteria of emergency services is their proximity to populations and users. Quick access to these services, preventing losses that result from delays in care and care, is a decisive factor in the effectiveness of intervention in emergency situations. Leaving emergency services further away from users is a measure contrary to this effectiveness.
The adequate dimensioning of the emergency service given the volume of user requests is another criterion to be taken into account. When several emergency services are concentrated in one without resizing their capacity to respond to the total volume of requests that previously all services had to close, what this means is that an ineffective and strangulated system is being designed from the outset.
Experiences carried out in the past confirm that all this is so and show the consequences of these options.
Users and healthcare professionals lose out. Some will be subject to worse operating conditions for the SNS. Those will find access to healthcare even more difficult. These will see working conditions deteriorate and exhaustion, demotivation and discouragement increase, which often lead to abandonment of the SNS.
The economic groups that operate private hospitals will gain and will see an increase in the customer base built from users who do not have the SNS responding to their needs. Unlike the SNS – which has an obligation to treat all diseases and all patients – private hospitals will be even more comfortable choosing the patients and diseases they treat, opting for what does not require too much work or large costs and leaving out those who do not have the money to pay.
The PSD/CDS government’s options seriously harm health. The urgency is not to end emergency services, it is to change policy.
Member of the European Parliament
Write without applying the new Spelling Agreement
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