Rubalcaba makes eight-billion-euro health system funding pledge

Speaking in Santiago de Compostela as part of his national tour to meet Socialist Party members, prime-ministerial candidate for the next elections Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said the 2012 state budget would include an extra ¤8 billion for the regions, to be spent on the debt-laden health service.

Speaking about the method of control over regional governments' spending and his pledge that "all the money" should go toward healthcare, the deputy prime minister said: "Let's see if they all do it, and if they don't, we are going to make sure that they do." The opposition Popular Party has recently begun to toy with the idea of limited patient funding for healthcare received.

Rubalcaba said that he was intent on preparing a "credible and practicable" electoral platform whose measures would center on "resolving Spaniards' big problem, which is employment."

Thanks to the steps already taken by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's Socialist government since the crunch hit, Rubalcaba said Spain was in economic terms "better off than two years ago," adding that it had avoided a situation such as that of Greece.

A member of the opposition Popular Party's congressional team, however, said that Rubalcaba should resign from his multiple government posts as deputy prime minister and interior minister in view of his candidacy for the prime-ministerial role in a future Socialist administration. "He should have resigned this morning because if he knows what needs to be done to create employment, he has spent seven years laughing at the jobless from government," Fátima Báñez told Europe Press.