The health reform, the great commitment of the Government of Gustavo Petro to show its commitment to change the social security of Colombia, is in intensive care.
The director of the Conservative Party, Senator Efraín Cepeda, announced that he will not attend a new negotiating meeting convened at the Casa de Nariño on Wednesday night, since doing so, he says, "is a waste of time."
He announces it after having received a new draft of the articles of the bill that, in his opinion, does not reflect what was agreed between his party and his allies from La U with the Government.
Something similar was said by the president of the U Party, former senator Dilian Francisca Toro.
"After receiving the presentation of the health reform project, we find that the agreed agreements are not contemplated, for which we will present an alternate presentation that includes the proposals presented by the parties to save lives," she explained on Twitter.
Without the votes of these two parties, the Government has no way to achieve majorities in Congress to carry out the reform: in the seventh commission of the House of Representatives, where the first debate will take place, it only adds nine of the 21 votes.
Toro and Cepeda's announcements come just two days after the Liberal Party announced that it was also withdrawing from the negotiations, for the same reasons.
That left the government depending on the conservative votes and the U, which had postponed any decision until after Easter.
That waiting time, which was already bad news for a government that has a very ambitious legislative agenda, sought to give the Executive time to prepare a new draft of the project.
"We will look at the articles and we will be able to define if there is really what we believe is best for patients and for Colombians," the president of La U said on Tuesday.
The reform is not formally sunk, since there has not been a vote in Congress.
The three traditional parties that have sought to negotiate it jointly with the Government have not denied the possibility of supporting it if the text meets their demands, which they initially agreed with the Executive two weeks ago, thus saving the proposal.
The three formations for now have announced that they will present a paper not to sink the reform but to adjust it to that agreement.
This means that a reform could go ahead with a text constructed by them or with elements of the two papers, that of the Government and that of the three parties.
The existence of this alternative presentation puts the Government and the benches that remain faithful to its proposal to choose between a total defeat, in which there is no reform, and a partial one, with a change to the health system that is less radical than the one defended by President Gustavo Petro and his Minister of Health, Carolina Corcho.
The text of the reform that the Government filed before Congress in February for its processing sought for the State to centralize the hiring of clinics and the affiliation of people.
The health promoting entities (EPS), which until now manage these parts of the system, were going to remain in a residual role.
The agreement between conservatives, liberals and La U with the Government revolves around these companies recovering part of their functions, under the name of health and life managers, so that there is competition and users can choose who will protect them.
In exchange, the parties accepted that the State is in charge of transferring the resources directly to the health care institutions (IPS), without the intermediation of the EPS.
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