Last August, a new Family Health Unit with exclusively private management, concessioned by the State, opened in São Pedro da Cadeira, in the municipality of Torres Vedras. Through this model, 5,463 users finally managed to have a family doctor. Nineteen other USFs with the same concession model are in the process of opening, five of which are in the Algarve.
The article questions whether the Ministry of Health was not capable of hiring General and Family Medicine doctors or simply did not want to do so, choosing instead to transfer to private operators the responsibilities of organizing and managing the public service.
News from various sources, denied by the Minister of Health, indicated that ULS Algarve could be handed over to the Union of Portuguese Misericórdias, which would mean that all state health services in the Algarve, from health center extensions to the Central Hospital, would pass to private management.
The article outlines the historical context of this issue, noting that PSD voted against Law 56/79 which established the NHS, accompanied by CDS, and that in 1982 the Balsemão Government attempted to profoundly alter the NHS through Decree-Law 254/82, which led the Constitutional Court to declare the law unconstitutional in Ruling 39/84.
The author argues that the paradigm shift from an NHS oriented toward public service to a health system based on commercial objectives cannot be implemented in a silent and progressive manner, requiring informed analysis, democratically sanctioned decision-making, and possibly an assessment of its constitutionality.
