The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, announced this Thursday that she will appeal the royal decree by which the Government of Pedro Sánchez recognizes the right to public healthcare for foreigners who live in our country, but do not possess legal residency. In this context, Vox already criticized that “Spanish healthcare has been opened to everyone” and assured that “in Colombia there are advertisements to come here for surgery”.
In this way, disparaging the universal right to health, Ayuso in the Plenary Session of the Madrid Assembly, has stated: “I am against health tourism and I am against the Sánchez Government's intention to blow up our public services”.
Likewise, it has positioned itself against regularizing “without control” and “with criminal records” migrant people. However, it has clarified that, in Madrid hospitals, they are not going to “let die” a person “due to their irregular regular situation”.
When the approval of the decree was published in the Official State Gazette (BOE), the Vox deputy José María Figaredo, in the government control session, reproached that “Spanish healthcare has been opened to everyone” and maintained that “in Colombia there are advertisements to come and have surgery here”. “It seems there is money for everything, except for Spaniards", he concluded.
Public healthcare for all
The measure that Ayuso and Vox oppose aims, according to what they explained on the ministry's website, “to establish a homogeneous and effective procedure throughout the national territory to recognize the right to health of foreign persons not registered or authorized as residents. With this regulation, the aim is to guarantee equity and avoid inequalities in this group, which allows for better control of diseases from primary care and a more efficient use of public resources”.
For this, people who are in this situation and want to go for treatment in public healthcare, will have to provide a responsible declaration stating that they do not have healthcare coverage through another means, to which they must also include, their habitual residence, through census registration, schooling certificates, utility bills or social services reports.
