The Minister of Health aims to be extended budgets

Luis Rosado, Minister of Health, yesterday threw cold water on the representatives of the Platform for Public Health Providers Valencia when I explained that in the absence of the General State Budgets for 2012, the Consell extended the Budgets of the Generalitat approved last year, spending forecasts clearly insufficient to cover the bills of hospitals and health centers, as have been denouncing for months for small suppliers of medical devices.

The extension involves freezing the budgets of all investment items and any transfer of capital. It responds to a strategy shared by several autonomous leaders of the PP, who have suggested that to extend limited budgets force until Congress approves the expenditure projections for 2012 state.

Future state budgets must be approved by the Congress of Deputies to be lodged after a general election on 20 November. The future government budgets could be adopted around March 2012.

Jorge Alart, secretary general of the Valencian Socialists, warned in the morning on Consell the temptation to extend the budgets to avoid expressing their true political figures before the general election. Alart cited "concerted action of all PP autonomic presidents" and added: "Alberto Fabra not want to present the 2012 budget because he wants to hide in the general election campaign of his true politics, wants to hide in the budgets that will to do very different things which are said every day, is lying when he speaks of 'no copayment', not to raise rates and they will not cut education and health. They're cutting back. "

Luis Rosado, Minister of Health, received counseling to representatives of the Platform for Public Health Providers Valencia, but the meeting was "a real fiasco" in the words of Vicente Peiro, a spokesman for small suppliers.

The platform brings together 33 companies serving all kinds of everyday products to hospitals and health centers throughout the Valencian Community, from gowns and gauze to cardiac valve prostheses. The demand platform partners around 100 million euros in unpaid bills since 2009.

Peiro explained how the Ministry of Health requested the complete platform for partners to estimate the amounts owed. According to officials of the counseling, the combined debt of the 33 members of the platform around 24 million euros.

The caliber of misunderstandings caused the postponement of the meeting until Friday for both sides to review in detail the numbers.
Bills in the drawer

"I do not know if you keep bills in drawers and not even been counted, but a debt of 100 million, a difference of 75 is excessive," said Vicente Peiro.

Providers requested by representatives of the Valencian Institute of Finance or the Ministry of Finance at the meeting to try to reach some agreement, actually supported by the Government, enabling them to anticipate the payment of outstanding invoices at the cost of taking financial costs can be charged by financial institutions that accept operations. But they found only three representatives of the Ministry of Health.

Small suppliers are a capillary network capable of meeting the needs of health centers with an efficiency that can not offer any big multinational. But the debts that dragged on for almost three years are about to drown many of them. Peiro said that two partners have already asked the creditor preconcurso and many others have been forced to cut staff because they can not take on more expenses. Since its establishment in March, small suppliers have feinting with a power outage that have never materialized.