The debate on the health reform that the national government is going to propose next year is on from now on. The Minister of Health, Carolina Corcho, has said that the text will be available to the country next January and that the bill will be formally filed in the Congress of the Republic at the end of February.
In some sectors there are great expectations, but in others there is concern. This is because the Ministry of Health has revealed some details of what the transformation that it is proposing would be.. For example, at the beginning of November, Minister Corcho launched what she called the Preventive and Predictive Health Program in the municipality of Aracataca, Magdalena.
His idea is to put primary health care at the center of the new model. For this reason, he announced the creation of a series of territorial medical teams whose objective is to search for patients who normally have difficulties accessing health services. With that, they want to reduce the rates of illness and death from preventable conditions before they become serious.
In addition, the minister has also said that the EPS would disappear from the system. Or, at least, they would have fewer functions than they do today. One of the most important is the management of large volumes of resources, which are then distributed among hospitals and clinics. The idea that several members of the Government have expressed is that the EPS no longer receive money from the State to insure patientsbut transfer that money directly to those clinics and hospitals.
“I see them (the EPS) as unnecessary,” said President Gustavo Petro during an interview with RCN news. “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”, he assured.
However, the different health services unions have indicated that the national government does not see in depth the role that they play today within the health system. For example, They have warned on different occasions that they are not only “financial intermediaries”Rather, they are the ones who assume risk management for patients and are in charge of promoting their health and preventing different illnesses.
In turn, they have warned that during the years in which they have been in charge of the insurance of citizens, they have obtained experience and accumulated knowledge that can be used to improve the health system. “The functions performed by the EPS are required in any health system and eliminating insurance would be a setback for the country”warned from Gestarsalud last November.
And what will happen to prepaid medicine?
When President Petro was asked if the health reform would affect prepaid medicine, the president replied no, that it would continue as it is. “That is a market”, pointed out the president in dialogue with RCN news.
In fact, what President Petro is proposing is precisely that the EPS continue in the market, but that they become a kind of insurance policy to offer their services to those who are able to pay for 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 president in a recent statement.
