Co-payment is common in the health sector.
Copay is a concept that is used in the field of private medicine to define the difference that exists between the price of a service and the value of the service covered by a health plan. This is, therefore, the amount that the affiliate has to pay to access said service.
For example: “Home care requires a co-payment of 10 euros per visit” , “The treatment you need is covered by social insurance, but requires a co-payment” , “I don't understand why I have to pay a co-payment if I pay all the corresponding fee each month."
Co-payment characteristics
The co-payment arises from the dynamics of the health industry . It is understood that the beneficiary (that is, the user, consumer or client) does not pay for each service since it has coverage provided by a social work or a prepaid medicine company, which, in turn, purchases the service but does not consumes, since it is intended for the beneficiary. This generates a distortion in the contracting of healthcare services, which leads companies to promote co-financing of the service by the affiliate every time they need to use it.
In this way, co-payment is a type of financing of health services that allows their cost to be assumed by the prepaid medicine company or social work and by the beneficiary. In practice, therefore, the copayment appears as an additional payment that the beneficiary must make to use the service, beyond the contributions made as a monthly fee.
The co-payment allows the financing of health benefits.
The conflict in Spain
In Spain , health co-payment has become a topic of controversy in recent years. And, as a result of the deep economic crisis that the country suffered some time ago, the Government proceeded to establish the aforementioned co-payment in several aspects. A decision that has raised complaints from the population since this had never happened before.
Like Education, Healthcare is considered free in the country because Spaniards religiously pay an amount of their salaries in taxes to make it so. Hence, the new measures that the central government or those of some autonomies try to impose in this regard have been openly rejected.
Many autonomous communities have spoken out against both this health co-payment and also the so-called pharmaceutical co-payment that was promoted a few years ago. This last system consists of citizens having to pay an amount for each medication prescribed by the doctor.
This measure has also raised complaints against it since the people most affected by the measure are the elderly and people with chronic illnesses. These are men and women who have a poor state of health, who need to be treated with a high number of medications for whom they cannot afford the co-payment, since they usually have very reduced pensions and even a lack of income. . In some communities, pharmaceutical co-payment was imposed, but judicial authorities have rejected it.