Seville, (EFE).- Public health in Andalusia is once again at the center of the controversy over emergency contracts with private clinics, taking advantage of a procedure that has already been repealed, something that the Junta assures that it has favorable legal reports, although the opposition demands the explanations of the Andalusian president, Juanma Moreno.
According to information from elDiario.es, between January 2021 and December 2022, the Andalusian Government awarded “by finger” -without publicity or competitive competition- 226.7 million euros to private clinics to refer patients, operations and diagnostic tests, taking advantage of the emergency contracting procedure authorized by the central government to expedite the health response to the pandemic.
At least 117 million euros of global spending (49.8%) were awarded by the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) under the auspices of an already repealed Royal Decree-Law, according to this medium.
In statements to journalists in Granada, the Minister of Health, Catalina García, has assured that the contracts have been made with transparency and with positive reports from legal counsel because the health crisis is still active, while recalling that they are published in the Transparency Portal “that everyone can see”.
These are contracts, he specified, that have been made in all the provinces of the community to “give an answer” to all Andalusians in the face of diagnoses and interventions.
According to García, the covid-19 pandemic forced all diagnostic and surgical processes to “slow down”, and 500,000 patients who were not on the waiting lists were rescued, reasons that have led Health to implement a system that would allow compliance “in time and form” with the decree on deadlines.
“monumental deviation” of 117 million
“If any government had been in this pandemic situation, extraordinary and worldwide, it would have done the same. Care for the Andalusians, that they be diagnosed and intervened in a situation in which the Andalusian public health system was overwhelmed and it was impossible to provide that care ”, he has sentenced.
The general secretary of the PSOE-A, Juan Espadas, does not think the same, who on Monday demanded that the Andalusian president, Juanma Moreno, give explanations in Parliament for the “monumental diversion” of more than 117 million to private healthcare with contracts ” by hand” and to assume responsibilities at the highest level.
This information “supports” what the PSOE-A has been saying for months, that the Government of Moreno is “increasingly” diverting public resources to private health, Espadas has assured, who has detailed that it is doing so through a procedure “outside the law”.
The parliamentary spokesman for Adelante Andalucía, José Ignacio García, also denounced this Monday that the Board, while “firing” 12,000 toilets, “gave away” 117 million to private clinics with a decree that was repealed from the stage of the pandemic of the covid.
In the spokesman’s opinion, these events seem “a real outrage that is part of the privatization wave” of the Andalusian president, Juanma Moreno and for which he will have to give explanations in the autonomous Parliament.
More forceful in their criticisms have been from Por Andalucía, a formation that has requested this Monday the urgent appearance of Moreno in Parliament to explain these contracts, a matter that has been branded as “possible corruption” of the Board, according to its deputy spokesman, Juan Antonio Delgado. EFE