Spain: more than 6.1 million unemployed

According to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, unemployment in Spain affected 6'157,000 people in November 2012, which means that the country accounts for 32.7% of the 18.82 million of unemployed people throughout the eurozone. The national unemployment rate rises to 26.6% and recorded an increase of 3.6%. More information here.

Employment in Spain is getting worse

During November Spain suffered more job destruction. The situation of social security is getting worse. read the complete note here.

Positive performance of Spain

In Spain reforms have had positive results. See the note here

VIII Ibero-American Conference on Employment and Social Security

On April 23 and 24 the VIII Iberoamerican Conference of Ministers of Employment and Social Security was held in the Senate Building in Madrid, Spain. The meeting had among its objectives to promote the creation of stable, decent and quality jobs, and strengthening social protection mechanisms. Information about the Conference here and here.

Spain: Rajoy raises the VAT from 18 to 21%

Mariano Rajoy, president of the Spanish government, implemented new measures to achieve an adjustment of 65,000 million euros over the next two years. The measures include: i) cuts in public employees and ii) increases in taxes, raise VAT from 18 to 21%. More information here.

Issues with the supply of drugs in Spain

The supply of drugs is turning out as a difficult toic in Spain due to the contraction of public budgets.

Health co-payment is imposed in Spain

In order to obtain an estimated saving of 7,000 million euros, the Spanish government announced on Tuesday the royal decree of the Spanish health care reform. This decree imposes a pharmaceutical copayment to medicines, prostheses and ambulances. The measure must be adopted before July 1st.  More information here and here.

Spain in plans to allow pensioners to continue working

The Spanish government is considering the possibility that older adults remain working while receiving his pension. More information here.

Spain approved the strategy "55 and Over"

The Spanish government approved the Global Strategy for Employment "55 and Over", which seeks to promote employment among older people, promote the extension of working life, and improve safety and health at work. More information here.

Spain: More crisis effects

The cuts in social spending continue to affect services in Spain. In Catalonia this is meaning longer lines in the health services ...

Lockout of pharmacies in Spain, Castilla-La Mancha

Against liquidity constraints, health systems tend to cut variable expenses to balance their finances. Sometimes, these are critical to the welfare of patients. In Spain, a community facing problems and a lockout of pharmacies due to delays in payments is Castilla-La Mancha.

Life expectancy continues to rise

The following figures show life expectancy at 60 years for different regions. Although there is a difference of about 4 to 5 years between North America and less developed countries, all regions show a trend of rising life expectancy at 60 years, close to retirement age in most countries. This confirms the need to raise retirement age in countries (see previous note).

life expectancy at 60 years for different regions

"Social and Economic Agreement" in Spain

Today was signed in Spain the "Social and Economic Agreement" with employers and unions in the country, which specifies the cut pensions and job changes. The agreement states the extension of retirement age from 65 to 67 years; and other agreements on labor, energy and industrial sectors. See here.

Spanish workers must contribute 37 years to get full pension

To collect a full pension, the Spanish workers should not only take over 67 years old but it also must have worked more than 35 years. Read the complete note here.

UE-Mexico Dialogues – Clinical Practice Guidelines

The workshop on Clinical Practice Guidelines was the last topic of the seminar. Similarly, there was participation of European and Mexican experts. The main conclusions of the workshop are:
- Approve the recommendations between countries that exchange patients.
- There should be a high level of commitment by the political authority to the program of clinical practice guidelines.
- Interest and willingness of sectoral integration.
- Know the use of clinical practice guidelines for the training of human resources for health.
- Assist in training and consultancy for the development, implementation and evaluation of clinical practice guidelines.

UE-Mexico Dialogues – Drug Policy

Drug policy was the fifth topic of the Seminar. During said workshop, experts from Mexico and Europe established the necessity of determining drug prices based on the added clinical value, as well as to homogenize the drug inclusion criteria, insure the participation of public and private parties, and share information. Finally, an important proposal was to create a generic coherent policy to reduce costs by replacing drugs with equivalent but less expensive products, this can be achieved by promoting confidence in generics, through generic prescription and reference price.

Pension reform in Spain

Adolfo Jimemez will be a keynote speaker in the upcoming CISS meeting in Panama City. He has just published this article on pension reform in Spain. Just today, 450,000 French are in the streets protesting against pension reform; this interview with Martine Durand explains the issues quite well.

UE-Mexico Dialogues - Health Technology Assessment

The fourth workshop of the seminar dealt with the evaluation of health technologies (ETES). Experts from Spain and Mexico detailed the experience in their respective countries and then develop a proposal for the Mexican case.

As main conclusions are:
- ETES system in Mexico is an unbundled system, so it is very important to integrate developing a framework for national implementation.
- It is essential to have a scientific committee operating with technical representatives of all institutions.
- The methodologies should be harmonized and adaptable.

UE-Mexico Dialogues

On Monday and Tuesday, held the Seminar on Deepening Health Systems as part of "Dialogues on Social Cohesion Policy between Mexico and the European Union" mentioned in an earlier note. This seminar was attended by experts on the subject of Spain, France and Mexico. By Mexico, the participants were of the IMSS, ISSSTE and the Ministry of Health. The seminar was divided into six different workshops: 1) Structuring of networks, 2) electronic medical record, 3) cross-billing, 4) Health Technology Assessment, 5) drug policy and 6) clinical practice guidelines. The workshops discussed the experience in Europe and Mexico, which facilitated the exchange of ideas, and developing proposals. In the following days we will be talking about specific workshops. Here you can find all information related to these dialogues.

Efficiency in health care systems…continued

For the second analysis we used 2 variables as inputs, which are physician’s ratio per a population of 10,000 and hospital beds ratio per a population of 1,000; and 2 variables as outputs: i) infant mortality rate and ii) life expectancy in women between 40 and 44 years of age. Likewise, data was obtained for countries in the American Continent and OECD countries, for years 1990 and 2008 (1991 and 2007 in case there was not information available).

Out of the 28 countries analyzed, 15 were more efficient in 2008 than in 1990. Trinidad and Tobago, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Netherlands, Paraguay, Austria, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Dominica, Peru, and Jamaica registered an index greater than 1. With respect to the efficiency change, the following graph shows that Mexico, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Netherlands, Peru, Jamaica, and Dominica were better off in 1990 than they were in 2008.