The debate on the reform in the country has not yet begun, but it has already started. The text with the reform will only be known from the month of January. The Minister of Health, Carolina Corcho, has said that the bill will be formally filed in the Congress of the Republic at the end of February.
Some sectors look forward to the reform, others are concerned regarding what may come, because, as we already knew in days gone by, The Minister announced that she would not approve the budget increase of the Training Payment Unit, UPC, of 14.9%, –I did not trust that calculation–He launched strong taunts at Law 100, and spoke of the fact that the EPS would disappear from the system, or would continue but with fewer functions than they have today.
In addition, at the beginning of November, Minister Corcho also launched the Preventive and Predictive Health Program in the municipality of Aracata, Magadalena, -for primary care, through a series of teams of territorial doctors-.
President Gustavo Petro shares the same position. In an interview for RCN News, he said that these were unnecessary, and that “The EPS today are conglomerates of the IPS. People believe that the EPS is the hospital, which is the one that really provides the service. No, those are not the EPS. The EPS are intermediaries to which the State provides public or semi-public resources and they hire hospitals to provide the service”.
For those who are part of this union, within the health system, they consider that the national government is unaware of the other functions that the EPS fulfill, because They are not necessarily “financial intermediaries”, they have also assumed risk management for patients, and have carried out health promotion and prevention campaigns.
Noticias RCN also asked the president if the health reform would affect prepaid medicine. He said no, that his system would continue as it is, what if it had to change, and that it would happen gradually, is that these will become a kind of policies, and whoever wants to, will be able to acquire them.
“The EPS today can be turned into networks. First, in voluntary insurance policies for the middle classes, free, we are not going to prevent that, they can be IPS networks, which is what the hospital is called, the clinic that the State can pay for services and help finance them. In such a way that there is a transformation of all the personnel who are working there in these EPS, they have a place in the new health system, it is not regarding laying off workers or workers, but, on the contrary, guaranteeing job stability ”, he assured the mandatary.
