Costa knows he wants to “move faster” on housing and health
In his assessment of the eight years he spent leading the government, António Costa acknowledged that there were measures that needed to be implemented and others that had not achieved the expected results in the areas of housing and health. “The new government will certainly lack problems to solve,” he quipped, “and the job will not be abolished.”
Outgoing Prime Minister António Costa admitted on Wednesday that there were matters on which he would have liked to “move faster” and not all the measures taken had worked as expected. It is the areas of housing and health that leave Antonio Costa with the greatest “bitterness in the mouth”.
“There will certainly be many criticisms to be made by the opposition regarding the government's actions. If there are topics we would have liked to have moved on faster, yesHe said in a press conference in which he reviewed the past eight years of socialist rule.Furthermore, there were actions we took that did not work“, I confess.
Starting with housing, Antonio Costa said the National Urban Rehabilitation and Construction Fund was created, which “did not achieve the results” the government wanted it to achieve.. “No one expected prices to rise as big as they did in housing and this is an area [em que gostaria de ter feito mais], I confess. “Then, of course, there is “Other areas where there is usually a lot of criticism, but it is not clear whether these criticisms should be framed,” he said..
Regarding family doctors, Antônio Costa said it was important to understand “the distance that results from having fewer doctors and what results from having a larger resident population.” “If we look at the number of people registered in the SNS, today we have a much larger resident population. Since 2018, the migration balance has been positive, that is, there are fewer people who will live abroad, more people coming to Portugal and more users in “SNS”.
Regarding waiting lists, he stressed that it is necessary to know “what is the normal and appropriate term.” So a reform in primary care was undertaken, with the rollout of USF's Model B units, which meant “increasing the number of users per family doctor”, he says. “For this reason alone, there are many Portuguese who did not have a family doctor and will have one now,” he explained. “All this happened in less than two years of the government's existence. I don't apologize. And how is it? “When you look objectively at the results in health, we have 3.2 million more consultations today than we did in December 2015,” he said, saying that “the numbers are very clear” and there is now “almost a third increase in consultations in 2015.” And “more than 1.2 million surgeries.”
However, he recognizes that “not all SNS problems have been solved” and says that reforms such as the establishment of Executive Directive, Full Dedication and USF Model B units “will contribute to solving these problems,” giving as an example overtime reduction with full dedication.
“It is certain that the new government will have no problems to solve, and no measures to solve. There is one thing that every government that arrives has guaranteed: that their jobs will not be abolished for unnecessary reasons, because there are always problems that the government faces,” he said sarcastically. “This leaves the new government to solve the problem.”
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