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The human cost of cuts to Spain’s prized health system

Madrid (AFP) – “Either we eat or I take my pills,” Maximiliano Diego recalled a patient confessing after stopping treatment because cuts in Spain's public health system forced him to pay for medication from his own pocket. “He cried with fear at the closeness of death… but above all, he cried with shame at having to lie to his doctor,” Diego wrote on the site of an association defending public health, of which he is a member. This is but one example of the human consequences of Spain's financial crisis and subsequent austerity measures that have gnawed away at what the World Health Organization ranked the world's seventh best healthcare system in 2000 — an issue of concern ahead of December 20 elections.