The holding of this initiative, and of three dozen more that are taking place from North to South of the country, is the culmination of the national action promoted by the PCP, which began about a month ago with the motto - fight COVID, recover backlogs, guarantee access to healthcare - which aims to draw attention to the health situation and, fundamentally, to denounce the campaign that is underway against the National Health Service, by the economic groups in the business of disease.
A campaign carried out mainly over the last 20 years, which has had PSD and CDS-PP as key players, often with the connivance of the PS and even with its initiative.
The so-called “installed interests” in healthcare have always been against the NHS, as is clear today, namely the medical right-wing, the dominant monopoly groups in the production and distribution of pharmaceutical products and equipment and the private financial groups with their insurance companies. All of them have grown exponentially at the expense of devaluing the role of the NHS and from the transfer to these groups of part of the responsibilities of providing care by the public service.

Through the political intervention of PS, PSD and CDS-PP, it was possible for this conglomerate of “installed interests” to prevent the articulation and exploration of the full potential of the NHS, preying on it and using it as an instrument for the transfer of hundreds of millions of euros of public resources for private accumulation.

Government after government, the representatives of these interests, by party nomination, depending on the party in shift in government, in the different bodies and services, over these 40 years, have led the NHS to the current situation, to the detriment of the interests of the people and the country.

What these last few years have shown is the real plunder of the NHS, which has continued to grow, by private groups. Over the past 20 years, there are many billions of euros in conventions, contracts of service and PPPs, which have guaranteed a significant part of their budgets and investments in new units.
In 2018, for example, we can see that in the contracting of clinical acts with these groups and in PPPs, the SNS transferred more than 1,000 million euros, 500 million of which in diagnostic tests that could have been performed by the NHS, together with more than 400 million euros to pay for PPPs and about 200 million euros in payments to two large groups that take up more than 90% of the haemodialysis carried out in Portugal.

In total there are about 2 billion euros that go directly into the pockets of these monopoly groups.

Taking advantage of existing difficulties in the timely provision of healthcare in the NHS units, particularly at this stage, PSD and CDS, as if they had no responsibility in the situation, carry out, on the political and ideological level, a cynical attack against the NHS, undertaken on the ground by their cadres placed in health-related institutions and organisations, with strong media support.

In recent weeks, some of the main players of the campaign against the NHS have occupied the main media with successive interventions where they cynically pointed out what they say is the solution to save the NHS - the handing to the private groups of surgeries and backlog of consultations and diagnostics and therapeutic exams, that which makes a profit, leaving to the NHS with what gives expense, the fight against COVID-19.

And as there is little shame, they go even further when they argue that it is necessary to reinforce the funding of the NHS thinking about what they will benefit from it.

They do the harm and profit. For years they have been responsible for underfunding, for the social, professional and wage devaluation of NHS professionals, leading many of them to leave the regime of exclusivity or fully switch to private activity, they have not renewed equipment, left facilities to deteriorate, and as if they had nothing to do with the matter, now cynically propose a solution that, if adopted, would result in the destruction of the NHS in its nature and characteristics.

The president of the Association of Private Hospitals was very clear when he announced the willingness of private groups, which could have 500 beds available in their hospitals, but only 80 for COVID patients. This says everything about the solution they point to.

We, too, are concerned with the situation in the NHS today.

Despite all the difficulties and shortcomings displayed today, the National Health Service proved to be the only solution and instrument to ensure healthcare for all Portuguese, while large private groups closed their facilities and doors to Covid patients.

In the fight against the epidemic, the NHS proved to be the solution to fully guarantee the right to healthcare and in responding to the epidemic outbreak, making it evident that it is the only instrument capable of guaranteeing the health of the populations, today and in the future.

The determination, effort and dedication of healthcare professionals, doctors, nurses, technicians, technical assistants and operational assistants are widely recognized. Even in an extremely difficult time, the healthcare professionals said present.

In May, the PCP realising that it was necessary to maintain the fight against COVID-19, but also to catch up backlogs and guarantee access to healthcare for all, without leaving anyone behind, tabled a proposal in the Assembly of the Republic for an Emergency Plan for the National Health Service, which, if adopted and implemented, would have created the conditions so that, today, the NHS would not be experiencing the difficulties that are well known.

A plan that aims to strengthen financial, human, technical and material resources.

An emergency plan for the NHS that guarantees the conditions to increase its capacity, with the adoption of extraordinary measures to hire missing healthcare professionals, to guarantee working conditions and workers' rights, to increase the number of beds and modernise the equipment.

The solution to the current problems does not involve resorting to the State of Emergency, which is inadequate in measures that the country needs to face the difficult situation it is going through.

A State of Emergency that completely disregards the main question that is posed to the country, which is the definition of health security conditions that it is necessary to create in each area and sector, so that national life can proceed as normally as possible in the circumstances we live in.

The declaration of the State of Emergency does not point to a single real impetus for the strengthening of the NHS, but makes a shameless case for the business of disease. Even the legal possibility - which already existed and will continue to exist - of State requisition of private means is skilfully converted into an appeal to contracts that establish this business to increase the profits of private economic groups operating in this area.

The PCP reaffirms that the solution that the country needs in the face of the epidemic and the heightening of the campaign of fear associated with it, is to: strengthen the NHS, ensure individual protection, made pedagogy of protection; boost economic, social, cultural and sporting activities; exercise political and social rights and fight fear and its propagandists.

What is needed is to defend and strengthen the NHS, and to combat the plunder of the National Health Service by private groups.