Residents in Spain could lose free health care

After the Spanish Congress approved the State Budget, in recent days, the Social Security Act underwent changes that shall take effect from January 1st, 2014, but have  to receive final approval in the Senate.

Among the changes, hundreds of people will be excluded from the health system. If a citizen without work has exhausted all benefits and unemployment benefits and is absent from the country for more than 90 days in a year, he/she will lose the right to free health care in Spain due the lost of their resident status.

The platform “Yo Sí Sanidad Universal” ensures that the measure is a way to “close the circle of the Government’s strategy for health exclusion.”

In 2012, a decree changed health coverage to limit access to foreigners without documentation, only in exceptional cases such as serious illness, pregnancy care, delivery, post-partum, minors, asylum seekers, and trafficking victims. However, immigrants with residence permits for family reunification and domestic workers who lost their jobs also were affected by this decree .