For decades we have been bragging about Health Spain. The slogan that we have the best health care system in the world is rooted in society. Despite perennial accusations of waiting lists, political parties shy away from electoral battles around the Health Service. Until a pandemic arrives and shows what toilets themselves know: that legends are just myths. Public health system divided into autonomous communities and deep and unsupportive inequalitiesretains its good name thanks to the mix of competent professionals who endured the poor design of contracts and the relief that private activity for the public sector represents, unfairly reviled by the left.

The public system, and it’s proof, collapsed during the pandemic and hasn’t recovered yet. Against waves of fear and successive victims of health workers stricken with a mixture of the virus and serious psychological problems, they joined the hangover of an illness that was undiagnosed and untreated for nearly a year and which, today, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards are desperately waiting for. .

For this objective crisis situation, has been added medical personnel exodus and nursing, numbering about 20,000 in recent years. Staff who, let’s remember, were formed mostly in Spain — thanks in large part to a public university system with maximum demand and low fees for students — and then emigrated to other European countries which, yes, offer salaries appropriate for our category of healthcare workers.

That we shape them and other countries take advantage, France and England lead, tells us about the terrible management we have suffered. Today, more than half of young graduates in Medicine and Pharmacy see their future far from Spain. A Spain that in the next five years will need more than 50,000 new doctors and more nurses. Last week, nearly 20,000 nurses demanded the early retirement of Minister Escriva as a result of prolonged physical and mental exhaustion in recent years, a clear sign that the system is ailing. Just like the permanent shortage of doctors in primary care centres. Just like a delay of more than six months of surgery…

Yesterday, in an interview in your favorite newspaper, the President of the Government announced what labor reform had foreseen: employing about 67,000 toilets as permanent staff. We don’t know under what conditions, we don’t know how it will circumvent the power of autonomous community; We’ll see what surprises Sánchez has in store for us tomorrow, but we can rest assured that this patch just works. Pedro Sánchez’s love makes headlines which is then, never, the solution to anything.

The reality is that our health system needs profound reforms that go far beyond the belief that fixed position it is a solution to something. To start, the medical call of thousands of young people must be respected and utilized that every year they fail to access the public education system and that they cannot afford the high prices of private universities. We should contemplate, at least contemplate, systems like the Armed Forces that train their future doctors in excellence in exchange for long-term commitment. Like Deep wage inequality must be addressed between autonomous public health systems. Inequality must be corrected and administrations must find a way to attracting and retaining health staff with competitive salaries in a globalized world where Health is the key to the prosperity of a nation.

The time for essential reforms was yesterday. Today, the dire management of the parties that have succeeded each other in the Government condemns us to improvisational gifts and patches. In the short to medium term nothing can be done to improve the health system that the pandemic shows that, despite the efforts of most of its professionals, it is not the best in the world. It’s time to work with a long-term view. But it works. What PP has not done so far, let alone PSOE.