The communication vessels theory says that the pressure exerted on a molecule of a liquid is transmitted in full and with the same intensity in all directions (Pascal). This theory applied to hospital waiting lists is converted into the following one: those patients not attended in public hospitals will go to private ones. In order to increase private market share, the public system has to worsen. This is the malevolent theory partly explained in this documentary.
All theories require some support from facts and data. Private health insurance -duplicate coverage- has increased from 23,0% of population (2007) to 24,3% (2011). And discharges per 1000 inhabitants were 25,9 in private hospitals, and 98,7 in publicly funded ones (2007), on the other hand 26,3 and 89,0 respectively (2011). Therefore, there is a 1,3 points of increase in insurance and 0,4 points in hospital discharges in private hospitals. People may contract more insurance slightly but such increase is not reflected equally in discharges. If you want to look for previous trends you'll find other increases of private insurance of 1 pp without any public cutback.
The efforts to relate crisis and cutbacks to communication vessels between public and private is another example of confusion between concurrent facts and causality. Somebody should demonstrate clearly such relationship before broadcasting it on a TV program, otherwise his reputation is at risk.
The additional argument of unfair competition of public hospitals when the provision of privately funded services requires once again to be proved. Unfair competition as we know it, it's what law defines. I can't see any provision with such possibility in the current law. Otherwise may be considered a comment without a clear definition of what we are talking about. If you add such comments in a documentary it may seem that it is relevant, and once you check it in detail you'll see that those that talk about unfair competition are asking to be contracted by public funding at the same time. Does this make any sense?.
Once again, I repeat what I said: A wider and sound view about current challenges in health care would
allow to understand reality and take better decisions. A new documentary
should be recorded to replace it. This is my kind request to TV3.
