According to a recent Solidaris opinion poll, four out of ten people in Wallonia and Brussels have already given up on health care for financial reasons. If all care is following the same tendency (+4 percentage points in four years), visits to medical specialists are particularly in focus (+7.9pp). "If the over-sixties are still the best prepared to face up to the situation, it is among their number that the putting off of health care is increasing the most: +123pp for specialists and +8pp for GPs, by way of example," the National Union of Socialist Mutual Health Insurance Funds detailed.
From the perspective of a sociological breakdown, the middle classes "are no longer resistant to a lack of the means to care for themselves," it underlined. For this section of the population, the increase in the number of people delaying their health care is somewhere between +6.8pp and +9.8pp.
According to the poll, 59.9% of single-parent families are affected (+10.8pp) and "The disparity with other types of family structure is enormous." That being said, it is people living alone without children who are putting off their health care the most (+24.1pp, today concerning 50.7% of such persons). The number of people already on benefit for work incapacity is not static: 61.1% of them had to put off at least one facet of their health care in 2018 (+2.7pp).
"It is urgent we reinvest in compulsory health insurance," Solidaris advocated. It is proposing the complete reimbursement of basic health care costs in the first place, the mandatory third-party payer having to pay for all care for the BIM and chronically sick, support for the development of medical facilities and the restoration of minimum benefits.
The Brussels Times
The number of French-speaking Belgians putting off health care is growing
