The Council of Ministers of Andorra (Pyrenees), with the proposal of the health portfolio holder, Joan Martínez Benazet, has agreed to incorporate strokes or seizures in the list of pathologies that give entitlement to reimbursement benefits of up to 100%. The Board of Directors of CASS had sent the executive a favourable report in order to make this modification to the Regulation of benefits. This measure is applied in the initial phase of the treatment, while hospitalization lasts, the very time when medical actions help to improve the sequels and situations of dependence associated with the illness. Thus, the Services Portfolio Commission (CCS) has analyzed the costs associated with the acute stroke phase.
Expenses that CASS will now assume fully. Annexe 1 of the Regulation includes diseases that are long-lasting, progressive, serious and costly, with the goal to help people who suffer from them avoid significant expenses. Currently, a total of 17 pathologies are included, such as cancer, chronic hepatitis, tuberculosis, HIV or sclerosis. The stroke will thus become the eighteenth. In Andorra, in 2018, there were 145 cases of stroke. A stroke occurs when a blood vessel that carries blood to the brain breaks or is jammed. When this happens, the blood does not reach a certain area of the brain, so that the affected nerve cells do not receive oxygen and die.
