This scientific work acquires a special interest in a moment in which one of the main challenges in the Spanish political agenda is the negotiaiton of the financing model of the State. In the area of health, the current model was implemented in 2002, after the powers were transferred to the Autonomous Regions. Roberto Montero Granados´s thesis The need in the new model of public health financing: a measuring proposal from regression models points out that the public health system is not sustainable if there is not an even distribution among the different Spanish regions.
In the ranking of health resources per capita there are differences of a 50% among territories. Madrid and Valencia are the two which receive less funding, while Cantabria and La Rioja reach the 800 euros. This sharing has been adjusted according to population criteria, number of old people, insularity and bilateral agreements between Spain and the different autonomous regions.
Financing criteria
This thesis intends to suggest objective criteria for public responsibles to draw up strategies to increase the possibilities of the model. For that reason, population´s health demand is studied in depth according to five dimensions: medicines, visits to the doctor, clinical analysis, days in hospital and surgical operations.
“Such variables, representative of the most important expense functions of public health, all the Spanish provinces have been studied surveying more then seventy thousand persons”, the author explains. By this direct methos, we prevent non-strictly sanitary variables from affecting the statistics. “There are provinces where people go more often to the hospital for the simple reason that there are more hospitals. We suggest an econometric model to measure demand indirectly, objetively, as if in all the regions had the same health supply”.
In the study, it can be observed that the health demand depends above all on the population of the territory and not so much on insularuty or older people. We can also gather from the study other conclusions such as that less cultured population has a more difficult access to medicines and health care. It is also the case of the population with the highest cultural level, but it is not because they have difficulties, but because they turn to private health care.
Reference: Prof. Roberto Montero Granados.
Phone number: 958 249996.
E-mail: monterog@ugr.es
