The vast majority of the private intermediaries that are part of Colombia’s public healthcare system don’t comply with regulations that allow them to operate, according to the Comptroller General’s Office.
According to the watchdog, only five of the 26 intermediaries, called EPS’s, have the financial reserves to operate legally.
The EPS’s that are supposed to coordinate health treatments have accumulated a debt of $6.4 billion (COP25 trillion).
Some $2.8 billion (COP11 trillion) of this debt is owed to hospitals, said the financial watchdog in a report on the state of the public healthcare system.
Comptroller General’s Office
The financial check was carried out while the government of President Gustavo Petro was pushing Congress to approve a major healthcare reform without much luck.
President Gustavo Petro
In an interview with radio station Caracol, EPS representative Mario Cruz said that the financial woes of his sector are due to “various factors, like the major pandemic of two years and the almost 370,000 people who were attended with intensive care.”
The president of EPS association Acemi, Ana Maria Vesga, denied that the debts are the result of systemic issues.
Acemi president Ana Maria Vesga