Showing posts with label social security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social security. Show all posts

Monday, October 14, 2019

He loved Big Brother

I didn't sleep particularly well last night. I kept waking up with some half formed Spanish phrase rolling around the empty quarters of my mind before lapsing back into semi unconsciousness. It wasn't the thought of what the Catalans might do after the sentencing of their pro independence politicians today, it was because I was off to the Social Security office.

When I was last in that office, just before Christmas, I was told that my old age pension would include a little from Spain and a lot more from Britain. I started to get money from the UK, on time, in May. I expected a top up from Spain last month.  But it didn't come. Worse than that, trying to find out why not, I found, online, that my health care had been downgraded from a constitutional right as a worker to a bit of a dispensation for foreigners. Given that the UK has been a hotbed of political idiocy for a few years the less I have to depend on anything coming from there and the more I can rely on things directly from here the better.

I was worried about my appointment on two scores. The first, the perennial, is simply being able to present my case in Spanish. The second is that if my Spanish work history, dodgy and short as it is, was going to be disregarded then all those times I had stood out for a legal contract were going to be wasted. I also know that challenging a wrong, unfair or unreasonable bureaucratic decision is a hard and thankless slog.

My appointment was on the dot, no waiting at all. I told the bloke behind the desk that all I wanted to know was where I stood with Social Security - did I have Spanish rights or just foreign ones? We talked for a while, he looked at paperwork and then he said the magic words "If you've paid in to the system here then you have the right to health care". That was all I needed to hear. I was as happy as Larry; anything else was largely irrelevant. By the way apparently the phrase comes from the state of mind of an undefeated Australian 19th century boxer, Larry Foley, on retirement. But then  he made me happier. I was asked why I hadn't claimed the Spanish part of my pension. It seems that going in December hadn't been enough. I should have gone back when I finished working in April. We filled in the paperwork. All I have to do now is wait.

The handshake, as I left , was as warm as a manly, cisgender, handshake can be.

Saturday, October 01, 2016

Doctor, doctor

I know that the NHS, the British healthcare system, is a politically hot topic nowadays and I suspect there have been several changes to it since I left but, for someone who lived in the UK till 2004, the Spanish healthcare system and the British ones are basically similar.

The main difference is that you have to have paid into the Social Security system, or be the dependant of someone who has, if you are to get anything out of the Spanish system. Emergencies are always treated - though I'm not sure whether there might be a corresponding bill afterwards if you haven't contributed. Pensioners from any EU country are covered by the system here but the payment actually comes from the home country.

Dentistry is not included in the Social Security cover and there is a system of charging for prescriptions with various discounts which take account of your age, any disabilities and income but, in general, get sick and paramedics, nurses, doctors and an impressive array of medical hardware will come to your aid.

I've not been a big user of the system. An infection here and an injury there but the last time I spent any time at a doctor was in Cartagena four or five years ago. I have this idea that I can tell when it's something serious and when it isn't so, most times, I just wait for the malady to disappear and, touch wood, up to now there has been nothing serious.

Pinoso, as you know, is a really a village, rather than a town. A few souls short of 8,000. Nonetheless, it has 24 hour emergency medical cover. Our health centre is modern and operates at full swing on weekday mornings and early afternoons and then has a quieter afternoon/evening session. I don't actually know the opening hours but I know the principle well enough.

The last time I went to the doctor was on a Saturday afternoon when there is a just a skeleton, out of hours, staff on call. My stomach had been painful for a long time and the pain didn't seem to be going away and I didn't like it. Finally I was persuaded to go to the doctor in "emergency" hours. The doctor laughed, gave me something akin to imodium and sent me on my way. I felt suitably foolish.

Regular readers will know we have a couple of newish house cats and a visiting street cat  - a big white job. Having tried to scare him away we have now taken to trying to feed him so much that he leaves our two alone. A risky strategy I know. He is grateful for the food though. He goes into a frenzy as the food approaches and chows down in a noisy and very animated way. Tonight as I gave him a handful of the dried food he bit me. Nothing serious, he just mistook me for chicken flavoured biscuits, but he got a clout on his backside in retaliation.

An hour later and my hand was feeling very strange, A sort of pins and needles. I've heard about cat bites. A friend was very close to losing his finger after a bite from the family pet. Once again I rang on the out of hours bell at the health centre. Once again I was treated as a sort of idiotic time waster. They gave me a tetanus jab and told me to go back tomorrow if my hand swells up but basically they were miffed that I'd interrupted whatever it was that they were watching on the telly.

It's excellent that we have the emergency service though. Even if they do laugh at me.

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Nothing in particular

It's raining. It's rained quite a lot in the last couple of weeks. We've forgotten all about the drought which lasted from last winter through to a few weeks ago. Usually, though not today, it rains overnight which is very civilised. I can't pretend that it's warm but it isn't cold either - at least not outside. Generally we're into the mid to high teens during the day but with sun and blue skies so it feels pleasantly warm. Overnight we're down at 7ºC or 8ºC maybe. I expect it will turn cold in December, it usually does. The pile of leaves that have just started to clog our drive suggest that Autumn has finally arrived. And its getting dark just after six in the afternoon. Considering it will start to get lighter again just before Christmas that's not too bad. So outside, in the fresh air everything is as it should be. Inside the house of course it's miserable. On the front page of today's Alicante paper there's a headline which says that nearly half of the houses in Alicante province lack any form of insulation against sound, heat or cold. This statistical information is tied in to the introduction of energy efficiency certificates for dwellings a while ago. In our house the little windows, designed to keep out the beating sun of summer make our rooms dismal in winter and the uninsulated house with tiled floors, painted walls and badly fitting doors make it exactly the opposite of cosy. With the log burner alight the living room has been lovely and warm but all the adjoining rooms have a cold, musty feel. Getting into bed is quite unpleasant until you stop shivering.

In the news, corruption stories are everywhere. The health minister resigned this week. She was mentioned by a judge as being the direct recipient of goods bought with her husband's dodgy money. I heard lots of comments that it was like making the poor thing resign for having eaten poached game when she didn't know it was poached. Hmm. The same judge said the ruling PP or Conservative party had benefitted directly from dodgy funding but the health minister's boss, the national president, forgot about that when he stood up in parliament and said that corruption was not endemic. The last three PP party treasurers have all been in court, one is on remand and that one has accused the current president of taking illegal payments. I wouldn't like to give the idea that only the PP have their fingers in the till. Certainly on percentages they come out top but, down in Andalucia, there's a huge corruption deal about suspect redundancy notices which implicates two past PSOE or Socialist party presidents. And the independents don't want to miss out either. In Cataluña an almost mythical ex leader turns out to have a stash in Andorra and there was a case of illegal party funding a while ago that another key political figure somehow seemed to sidestep.

Back to our national president; he's a very strange president. Earlier this month a couple of million Catalans turned out for an illegal referendum on independence - the national president generally ignored that and sent something akin to the Crown Prosecution Service (if it's still called that) after the regional president for running an illegal poll. So much easier than arranging to talk about it. He's behaving the way I do when I need to talk to someone in Spanish on the phone. Anything to avoid a difficult conversation.

There are close on 2000 politicians currently charged with some level of corruption yet none of the promised anti corruption legislation has got past the committee stage. The politicians don't go easily either. None of them behave like people convicted of crimes. No sackcloth and ashes. Most of them spin out the process for ever with iffy legal arguments and expensive lawyers. The few who have been locked up argue about which prison they'd like. An ex president of one of the regions was in the sort of prison regime where you go home for the weekends and only put on your stripey suit every now and again. When people found out they got a bit indignant so a judge decided to withdraw those privileges. The ex politician appealed the decision. Another ex regional president who has been sentenced to four years in chokey still has body guards and an official looking car and has been asking the Central Government for a pardon - a real live get out of gaol for free card.

Yesterday I got a text message from the General Treasury of the Social Security on my phone to tell me that my petition to become a self employed person had been approved. In the past I've complained about the difficulties that people face who want to set up their own business here. People needed to have a hefty amount of cash behind them in the bank or at least some heavyweight backers willing to cough up if the business went pear shaped. Social security payments were high too with even the smallest business subject to a 260€ minimum payment from the first day of trading and before any tax committment. Anyway, for my new job, my new boss suggested that I should be self employed. This only made sense because now there is a sort of reduced charge sliding scale social security payment scheme starting at around 53€ for the first 6 months and then going 130€, 180€ and finally 260€ after two years. I thought it sounded like a good scheme. An incentive to get people to register and run legal businesses from the start rather than to start illegally and register only when the profits justified it. Nonetheless in my case I thought it sounded a bit flaky and there were plenty of disadvantages as well as advantages but the accountant told me that at least it was all legit. He did all the work. All I had to do was to sign on the dole and hand over some basic ID documentation and he did the rest. Then a text message. Nearly as strange as our president.