Migrants have “better health” than Spaniards and thus use fewer public healthcare resources than the native-born population, Spain’s socialist government claims through a study published by its own health ministry
According to Spanish Health Minister Mónica García, the study states that migrants in Spain make fewer use of the nation’s healthcare system, medications, and have a lower prevalence of chronic diseases than the native-born population — who are attributed by the document of using a more “intensive” use of their own country’s healthcare resources.
The study, titled, “Health Status and Use of the Healthcare System Among the Migrant Population in Spain” was presented by García on Monday. According to the La Moncloa presidential palace, the document contains a study that analyses the “health reality” of foreign-born individuals in Spain. Furthermore, the government of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez claimed that the study “confirms” the “Healthy Immigrant Effect” theory, which states that migrants have a health advantage over native-born individuals.
García, in remarks during the report’s presentation, claimed that the study makes the prevailing narrative surrounding migration and its pressure on the nation’s healthcare system “not hold up.”
In a post sharing her own remarks on social media, García claimed “We dismantle the narrative of hate with data” and that “universality is not only fairer, it also saves money for the healthcare system.”
“The migrant population uses the healthcare system less than the native-born population,” García affirmed on Monday. “Native-born individuals make greater use of the system at virtually every level of care: in primary care, they have more visits, undergo more procedures, consume more medications, and have a higher prevalence of chronic diseases.”
“When we talk about the collapse of the healthcare system, it is due to low investment, budget cuts, and privatization, those are the threats, not the migrant population,” the Minister further claimed, according to Spanish outlets.
“The next challenge is to address demographic changes, with an aging population and more patients with multiple chronic conditions, but without introducing racist and xenophobic elements,” she continued.
According to the Spanish Health Ministry, the study measured the overall health of Spain’s native-born population on 21 specific conditions, deemed by authorities as the ones incurring in the highest amount of demands and expenses to the nation’s healthcare system.
The ministry weighed the results with those from migrants, organizing the comparisons with the six-region classification used by the World Health Organization (W.H.O.).
The ministry said that it found that Spain’s native population has a “higher prevalence of 16 of the 21 conditions studied,” with Spaniards allegedly exhibiting a 20 percent higher prevalence in anxiety disorders, lipid metabolism disorders, acute upper respiratory tract infections, and asthma over migrants.
Despite migrant’s alleged health “advantages,” as stated by the Spanish Health Ministry, the institution warned that migrants’ health “tends to deteriorate” over the years they spend in Spain — a phenomenon that the Ministry claimed is allegedly caused by “unequal access to basic resources such as decent housing and healthy food, as well as to more precarious working conditions and ongoing exposure to risk factors in the host society.”
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