The majority of the senators of the commission that will vote on Petro's health reform sign a presentation to sink it

Eight of the 14 senators that make up the Seventh Commission of the Senate of the Republic have just signed a presentation on the health reform of the Government of Gustavo Petro.

With this decision, the controversial bill, which seeks to fundamentally transform Colombia's health system, is virtually sunk.

However, the reform continues until the president of the Commission, Martha Peralta, of the Historical Pact, decides to summon the congressmen to the vote.

In that session, the archival presentation and the positive one, which only had the support of the four senators related to President Petro, will be discussed.

Although signing a document does not obligate you to vote for it, it does mark the political position of the parties, so the Government will have to achieve an extraordinary feat to save the reform project to which it has invested most strongly in the year and a half of administration.

🇨🇴 #AThisTime |

8 of the 14 senators who make up this legislative cell and who signed the Archive Presentation on the #HealthReform meet at the premises of the #CommissionVII of the @SenadoGovCo.

pic.twitter.com/6RJvuiiE1e

— Commission Seventh Senate of the Republic🇨🇴 (@ComisionVIICol) March 12, 2024

The archival presentation was filed this Tuesday early in the morning by senators Lorena Ríos Cuéllar, Honorio Henríquez, Alirio Barrera, Nadia Blel Scaff, José Alfredo Marín, Miguel Ángel Pinto and Berenice Bedoya, members of the center and the right Democratic Center, Conservative, Liberal, ASI and Colombia Justa y Libres.

With that, a signature was needed to sink the project.

Finally, the senator of the La U party, Norma Hurtado, supported the initiative to archive the reform, after having prepared an alternative presentation that substantially modified the original proposal.

Hurtado explained the reasons for his decision in his X account: “I have made the decision to support the filing of the health reform, being consistent with the responsibility acquired with 50 million Colombians who placed their trust in me to represent them in the Senate.

Today, I consider that it is best to shelve this reform, since it does not guarantee the necessary change in our country's health system.

Thank you for your support and trust.”

🚨I have made the decision to support the archival presentation on #HealthReform in @ComisionVIICol, being consistent with the responsibility acquired with 50 million Colombians in my work from the @SenadoGovCo.

Today, I consider that it is best to archive this reform, since… pic.twitter.com/eeHwCLtlMg

— Norma Hurtado Sánchez (@normahurtados) March 12, 2024

Several opposition senators already consider the collapse of the reform as a fact.

Paloma Valencia, from the Democratic Center, celebrated on her X account: “Great news for Colombia.

The Petro Government's health reform has just collapsed.

Very good for those 8 senators who signed the presentation file.

“Colombia won.”

Alejandro Gaviria, Petro's former education minister, who left the Government for his criticism of the health reform, also thanked the decision: “Thank you senators for thinking about the health of Colombians,” he wrote, “Colombia deserves a good health reform.” health that serves people.

Not simply an ideological revenge that never thought about patients or building a viable system.”

Chamber representative Martha Alfonso, speaker of the reform, believes that the bill can still survive: “We are not defeated, the health reform is still alive until the presentation is discussed and the vote is taken.

"I invite Colombian society to mobilize, to the streets in defense of our right to health."

For now, neither President Gustavo Petro nor the Minister of Health, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, who is facing a motion of censure in the plenary session of the House of Representatives, have commented on the issue.

The collapse of the health reform would be a very hard blow for the Petro Government.

This bill, which was one of his most important campaign promises, has been the president's priority over other reforms that seemed to have an easier process in Congress.

Despite the criticism, Petro insisted on the urgency of fundamentally changing the health system, but so far he has not been successful.

His idea of ​​eliminating the financial intermediation of the EPS and strengthening the state-owned Adrees to be in charge of transferring health money to clinics and hospitals did not go down well in many sectors.

The debate on the health reform was little by little undermining the strong coalition with which the Government had started in Congress, to the point that the U and Conservative parties decided to declare independence.

This discussion also generated the first major crisis in his cabinet, in which the most moderate ministers who did not agree with the reform came out.

For now, President Petro must decide whether to withdraw the reform from the process in Congress to prevent it from collapsing, or if he does everything possible to try to change the voting intention of some of the senators who signed the archival document.

His strategy, meanwhile, has been to try to implement some of the reform ideas through decrees that do not require congressional approval.

News in development

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