2024-04-17 14:33:22
The agreements concluded expire on April 30. The Ministry of Health had already expressed its intention to reform the system.
DIARIO DEL HUILA, CURRENT EVENTS
Colombia once again enters a period that measures the social pulse on the Government. The contracts of Fomag, the National Fund for Social Benefits of Teachers, expire on April 30 and with this the debate opens once again about what is going to happen with health care for teachers.
That expiration date has already had several postponements, as the Government has been forced to extend the terms of the operators of that system due to the impossibility of reforming the teachers’ health mechanism.
However, the political panorama now is different because the health reform collapsed just two weeks ago and the Government has been taking steps to make the changes it wants to apply in the health sector a reality, even if it has not been approved by Congress.
The Ministry of Health had presented teachers with a health system proposal since the beginning of March and that initiative, with some adjustments, will be the one that will begin to be applied starting in May as part of a new insurance model for teachers. . However, the details of the transition have not yet been finalized.
What is clear is that the contracts with the service providers end on Tuesday, April 30, a date that had been established since the extension of those signatures that had been agreed in October 2023 to, in this period that is about to end, consolidate a new health system for teachers. The problem is that there are two weeks left until that deadline is met and there are still points that have not been adjusted.
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What’s more, on the agenda of the Government, Fecode and the entities that provide their services to Fomag, meetings are planned for this week in which they will have to specify what the transition will be like. The truth is that the Executive branch has already made it clear that the time has come for change in that health system.
“We are all worried. Although it is true that we raise the urgent need for this change in model, it cannot be just any change (…) There are fears, of course, even more so among those who have catastrophic, very high-risk, terminal diseases, because if it is not implemented All of this puts even your own life at risk,” explained a member of Fecode who asked the national government to responsibly assume the changes in the health system.
For now, teachers point out that the day after the date on which the contracts end (April 30), patients will have to go to the same entity that has been providing them with the service while the new health system is being implemented. teachers.
Fomag has 818,960 members, of which 401,114 (48.9 percent) are over 50 years old and 113,789 (13.89 percent) are over 69. Of that total number of subscribers, 40.6 percent It is concentrated in 14 cities and there is a list of 292 municipalities that have less than 50 members.
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