LatinNews Daily Report - 30 October 2013

POLITICS | Health sector workers march. On 29 October thousands of health sector workers and medical university students took to the streets in cities across Colombia to demonstrate against the government's proposed health reform bill, which is currently being debated in congress. The bill proposes significant changes to Colombia’s complex and inefficient public-private national healthcare system. While the government is pushing for the bill to be approved before the end of the year, it has been heavily criticised by various health care workers’ unions including the main doctors union, Asociación Nacional de Internos y Residentes (Anir), for allowing private firms to continue to play an active role in the administration of the sector, despite a string of corruption scandals. According to an Anir statement “The proposal maintains and strengthens the business-like aspect of healthcare… calling for the transformation of the [private healthcare administrator Empresas Proveedoras de Servicios] EPS into Gestoras de Salud, giving them a dominant role in the system, legalising the appropriation of public healthcare resources in the form of profits… at the expense of patient care and the decent remuneration of health sector workers”. President Juan Manuel Santos has said that while he understands these concerns, the reform is necessary to correct the sector’s endemic structural problems in order to prevent its “financial collapse”.

End of preview - This article contains approximately 215 words.

Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article

Not a Subscriber?

Choose from one of the following options

• Subscribe
• Sign up for a one-time, 14-day trial