2024-04-06 01:48:05
The health reform, one of the key legislative pieces on the agenda of Gustavo Petro‘s Government, faces an uncertain fate in the session of the Seventh Commission this Wednesday.
During Tuesday’s session in this wing of the Senate, the opposition managed to impose its will and establish the agenda, placing the discussion of the project as the only item on the agenda for Wednesday.
For two weeks, the project has been on a tightrope, with nine senators ratifying their vote to shelve it, after having passed the House of Representatives stage last December.
This Wednesday’s session will begin at 8:00 in the morning and will focus on voting on impediments to the text.
The project has tried to be saved through an alternative presentation presented by Senator Fabián Díaz, filed last week.
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Among the main changes proposed by this alternative is the transformation of the Health Provider Entities, EPS, into Health and Life Managers. Despite this modification, the text maintains this provision, but adds the possibility that this new manager can be created under a new legal entity and grants the power to assign people to the Primary Health Care Centers, Caps, of your preference.
However, one of the points of greatest controversy has been the analysis of the fiscal costs that health reform would entail. The Ministry of Finance recently presented a document in the Congress of the Republic, signed by the Technical Vice Minister, María Fernanda Valdés, estimating that the reform would have a cost of $105 billion in 2025, which represents an imbalance of -0.18% as part of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
With these data on the table and in the midst of a climate of political uncertainty, the fate of Petro’s health reform hangs in the balance, with this Wednesday’s session determining its final destiny.
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