The decision of private insurers to leave the Muface concert void for the years 2025 and 2026 placed the Ministry of Civil Service in an unprecedented situation, which forced the department led by Óscar López to propose a “reflection process” on the model that allows Civil servants can choose between receiving health care through private companies or in the public system, either when they get a job or every January.
The ministry is currently studying the “voluntary nature of the model, which would mean that civil servants now covered by mutuality can choose to be in the common regime or in the special regime” and that this decision is taken “once and for all”, according to El País reported this Friday and elDiario.es was able to confirm it from public service sources. This change in model would prevent civil servants from moving from one system to another and would make it “easier to plan the system’s sources of income and its sustainability”, they emphasize.
The private insurers, mainly Adeslas, Asisa and DKV, which provided the service, refused to respect the agreement that the government approved at the beginning of October and which provided for a premium increase of 17.12%, which the companies consider insufficient to guarantee the quality of service without incurring losses. In previous weeks, the private healthcare lobby had already claimed that even an increase of 25% would “endanger” the continuation of the model.
Furthermore, ministerial sources point to another important step. More and more officials are choosing public health over private insurance. The latter continue to monopolize the benefits of the majority of the civil service, 70%, but the trends are against them. Since 2013, the membership rate of civil servants in Social Security has increased from 18 to 30%. This rate is mainly due to new incorporations.
“The increase over the last three years is due above all to the volume of income of primary and secondary teachers, through the stabilization and competition processes,” Public Service sources told this editorial office. In total, there were 80,000 civil servants, aged on average 49 and 38 years old and who “always benefited from the attention of the public health service”. And they will not be the last, because in July the Executive announced the largest public job offer in history, with more than 40,000 positions. However, not all of them will be aimed at civil servants with the Muface option, as those in Justice and the Armed Forces have their own model.
“Given, on the one hand, that the new mutualists are turning more and more towards the public, and that, with a historic increase in premiums (17.12%), insurers have not wanted to present offers , leaving the auctions deserted. It is time to open a reflection on the mutualist model which is based on three principles: transparency, fairness and sustainability”, indicate sources from the Public Service, who should know the conclusions of a report from the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility , planned for the end of the year, on the evaluation of expenditure linked to administrative mutuality, ordered by the Council of Ministers and initiated by the European Commission.
The Executive emphasizes, however, that one thing is the reflection on the model and another is the new call for tenders in which the Civil Service is working for the next two years. Thus, this department continues to work on other specifications that satisfy insurers. “Muface beneficiaries have guaranteed healthcare until January 31, so there is enough time to launch the second call for tenders; Regardless, there are mechanisms in the Public Sector Contract Law that guarantee assistance under the same conditions until the expired contract is replaced by another,” they point out.
Different sources already indicated last week that the Executive “is considering extending the contract”. A scenario that is not preferred by any of the parties, but which would give the ministry the possibility of preparing a new concert in which, from the private sector, they would indicate that the budget is “fundamental”, but in which other conditions that could also influence and contribute to “correcting imbalances in the system”, such as coverage or the high average age of mutual insurance members.
