Madrid, 10 December 2025.- Press Release
The Spanish Private Healthcare Alliance (ASPE) expresses its profound rejection of the current government’s new biased and sectarian view of public-private collaboration in healthcare. The report “Evaluation of private healthcare in the Spanish healthcare system”, published by the Ministry of Health, is a confusing document written with the sole mission of belittling the essential role of the private sector’s contribution to public health.
Claims that question the legitimacy, efficiency and contribution of the private sector are not only unfair, but dangerous: they once again promote an ideological debate that puts the health of millions of citizens at risk. One of the basic axioms defended in the report is that there are increasingly more private centres linked to the NHS, claiming that their number has grown exponentially in practically all autonomous communities. To this end, it provides growth percentages based on data that assumes the non-existence of private hospitals linked to the NHS in 2019, which is completely incorrect and therefore creates an artificial reality with the sole pretext, as throughout the document, of underpinning its disparaging thesis against the contribution of private healthcare.
ASPE responds with facts to the main attacks and warns of the real consequences of ignoring the private sector.
- Private healthcare always collaborates at the request of the public system.
- Private healthcare is more economically efficient.
- Without collaboration, delays in care would lead to systemic failure of the Spanish National Health System (SNS).
- Private healthcare collaborates less than it did 10 years ago.
- All autonomous communities collaborate with private healthcare, including Ceuta and Melilla.
ASPE condemns the simplistic and ideological approach that seeks to present private healthcare as a problem rather than a solution. The data shows the opposite: private healthcare always works on demand from the public system, using its infrastructure and staff to meet specific or persistent public healthcare needs; its contracted services are much cheaper than public ones, which means real savings; our centres take on a significant part of healthcare activity, reducing waiting lists and alleviating pressure on the public system; and their presence in agreements is declining, which shows that there is no disproportionate boom.
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