Salud: ¿derecho o negocio?

Spanish health is at a crossroads today, surrounded by a double danger: greatly weakened by the wave of cuts and privatizations that unleashed the crisis of 2008, it is also in danger of dying of success if it is stranded in self-satisfaction to be, in spite of everything, one of the most universal and of the highest quality in the world. The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the urgency of diversifying a system that is unilaterally curative today, relatively inattentive to the crucial issues of prevention in public health and care policy; and, in general, of the socio-sanitary coordination. The authors of this essay dissect in it the main challenges of the Spanish health system when the third decade of the XXI century begins: from the unfortunate paralysis of the Public Health Law, for which it was necessary to wait thirty years from the approval of the law General Health, a decade after its enactment, to the possible negative consequences for the doctor-patient relationship, as well as in terms of population control, which represents the growing digitalization of the system alongside its undoubted advantages. Between the renewal and the assault on public health, a system increasingly configured as a mere technologist, repairer and hypermedicalized, with obvious signs of fatigue, is the purpose of this book written with the conviction that the jewel of the state is not defended of the well-being that is the public health from the nostalgia of the past, but also not giving itself uncritically to the technological mirage.