Boric's health "revolution" consists of resembling Spain

In 2017, Sebastián Piñera and his presidential campaign promoted the use of the expression

to urge the population to vote for his candidacy.

The premise was that if the left won, Chile would plunge into a catastrophe similar to the one that has consumed Venezuela for years.

This fear of the “radical left” gained strength during the social unrest of 2018, the subsequent elections to the Constitutional Convention and again during the presidential elections last year, which resulted in the victory of Gabriel Boric.

Since March 11, Boric is officially the President of the Republic and is preparing to implement a program that generates fear and nervousness among the Chilean right.

For any of us in Europe, however, these measures would be seen as a moderate roadmap to achieve the basic rights of a welfare state.

A clear example is the health program.

Their proposals focus on the creation of a National Health Service that guarantees universal and equal coverage for all Chileans with private insurance as an additional option.

Also in prevention –for example, the limitation of advertising of tobacco and ultra-processed foods–, and in improvements in the health system, such as the digitization of clinical files or the reinforcement of the labor rights of health professionals, or an increase in resources in Mental Health.

One wonders how it is that the Chilean and Latin American right, and even different European media, brand these types of measures as "communist".

There is an impression that in order to finance this health system, among other things, land expropriations, company nationalization, bank interventions, and other phenomena seen in Venezuela, for example, will be carried out.

But this catastrophic vision is far from the true proposals of this government.

Chile is considered a high-income country, with a GDP per inhabitant similar to that of Poland or Hungary, and a member of the OECD, the club of the world's richest nations.

It is natural for a nation with income from a European country to aspire to services from a European country.

This sentiment played a role in the social upheaval of 2018 and has largely driven Boric's candidacy.

However, Chile has the highest inequality in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 65% higher than the average for high-income countries.

What this implies is that the country has the necessary wealth to create a more egalitarian society, but the financing required to improve social benefits such as health can only come from where the money is.

And money in Chile lives in two or three neighborhoods of the capital, those where the rejection of the new constitution swept through, and later the far-right candidate José Antonio Kast.

A quick look at Boric's program is enough to glimpse a nation where people from the poorest strata have access to health, education and opportunities that equal those of the elite

To increase state revenue and, incidentally, begin to reduce the enormous inequality in the Andean country, one of the measures proposed by Boric's program is a 2.5% tax on all wealth over five million. of dollars.

It is not excessive considering that in Spain, for example, the wealth tax starts at 700,000 euros, and depending on the autonomous community, it can reach up to 3.5%.

Difficult to discuss this measure in a country where half the population lives with less than 500 euros per month, but with a cost of living similar to that of Spain.

However, the propaganda machine of the Chilean right has not been slow to sow fear of

, a communist debacle that will lead the country to ruin, where poor people will no longer die on surgery waiting lists and rich people will have less cash for second homes this year.

The prevailing neoliberalism after the fall of the dictatorship, and the 1980 constitution, a product of it, truncated in Chile what should have been a transition towards a welfare state that guaranteed basic rights to the most vulnerable in society.

A quick look at Boric's program is enough to glimpse the end of that transition: a nation where people from the poorest strata have access to health, education and opportunities that equal those of the elite.

Guaranteeing quality universal health coverage that does not cause financial difficulties for the population is a step forward in terms of equality and rights, not a populist measure.

Misinformation and the generation of fear are irresponsible reactions and with clear economic motives that seek to maintain a status quo that Chilean society already sentenced three years ago.

Under Boric's command, Chile will not be Venezuela, but it has the opportunity to belong to the Chileans.

Clara Marín Carballo

is a physician specializing in Public Health and coordinator of the Policy Analysis department at ISGlobal.