Un análisis crítico de las políticas fiscales sobre la sanidad privadapor una combinación adecuada de eficiencia y justicia

Resum

The current crisis in the public health system has led to enhancing the use of private insurance. Several autonomous communities in Spain have already included tax deductions for premiums paid for this item. This article is intended to critically analyze these initiatives against others that could meet the same target more effectively, based on the principle that what is to be deductible is the real cost savings for the government. To this end this paper studies the current legislation, both Spanish and EU, as well as the most relevant suggestions for amendment. The most current technical studies, such as the IDES, have been also analyzed. The main result of this study is that there is no evidence that a deduction on insurance premiums neither is a requirement of justice, nor may assume that his overall efficiency as high as its proponents claim. Consequently, the introduction of private insurance deductions is reasonable and may be useful in the face of decreasing the costs of the public health system. However, this requires associating those deductions to the real cost savings, not premiums paid to insurers.