Petro intervenes in Sanitas, the second largest EPS in the country, in the midst of the health reform crisis

The Government of Gustavo Petro intervened this Tuesday afternoon in the EPS Sanitas, the health promotion entity is the second largest in the country, with 5.7 million members. The decision of the Health Superintendency comes in the midst of a deep crisis in the Senate, which has the president's health reform on the brink of collapse. Since he came to power, Petro has sought to fundamentally transform the health system and eliminate private EPSs, which according to him have turned health into a business and not a right. The objective of his reform, which today suffered a great defeat in the seventh committee of the Senate and which will be voted on Wednesday morning, is to eliminate the intermediation of the promoters so that the money passes directly from the State to the clinics and hospitals .

Petro wrote on his X account justifying the decision: “The government has the obligation to save the health system and the lives of Colombians. The current system, as has been denounced for years by different instances of administrative, judicial and political control, extracted public resources for tens of billions of pesos that were not invested according to the law and were lost, and we must act according to the law and the constitution and with determination.”

With this intervention, the Government does not seek to liquidate the entity but rather to administer it. This involves changing the manager and the board of directors and appointing an independent auditor. In theory, there will be no significant change in service delivery for patients. The intervention occurred at the main headquarters of Sanitas, on 109th Street and the highway, north of Bogotá.

The superintendent of health, Luis Carlos Leal, confirmed the intervention through a video published on the entity's X account: “The National Superintendency of Health in the exercise of its functions has just taken possession of the assets, assets and businesses of the EPS Sanitas. And orders the measure of forced administrative intervention to administer this EPS for one year. This is based on non-compliance with the financial qualification requirements.” According to Leal, services for users will not be altered. “The functions of the EPS will continue. Affiliates should not incur any administrative procedure. Continuity in the provision of services will be guaranteed. “The measure is taken with the aim of protecting the health of the population.”

EPS Sanitas is owned by the Spanish group Keralty, which has companies related to the health sector in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Peru, Venezuela, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic. According to the Minister of Health, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, this is one of the EPSs that receives the most money from UPC, a rate that the Government pays for each member. Between 2019 and 2023, the nation transferred more than 31 billion pesos to it. “They continue to insist that they don't have money,” Jaramillo has said in several scenarios. The minister has denounced that the company does not comply with the technical reserves or the minimum assets it should have to provide an adequate service. An audit commission of EPS resources led by former minister Corolina Corcho announced this Tuesday that Sanitas would have embezzled 3.06 billion pesos. In the last four years, 13 EPSs in Colombia have been intervened and then liquidated. This, which caused nearly 6.4 million

The decision has generated an avalanche of criticism from independent sectors and opponents of the Government. The representative of the Democratic Center chamber, Andrés Forero, who was the first to warn about the intervention, denounced on his X account: “The government intends to intervene in Sanitas imminently. After financial asphyxiation comes dispossession. They did not learn from what happened with the intervened EPS, which worsened indicators after the intervention. Clearly, patients are not a priority.” Miguel Uribe: is the beginning of the end of democracy beginning? Will it be retaliation for having scheduled the discussion of health reform?

Alejandro Gaviria, former Minister of Health for Santos and Education for Petro, also criticized the decision: “The imminent destruction of the health system is a tragedy for Colombia. The health system has represented the greatest social advance since 1991. The government's ideological revenge will affect many lives and could cause many deaths.” The academic expert in health systems from John Hopkins University expressed himself in the same sense: Andrés Vecino, With the intervention of Sanitas comes the flight of healthy members who contribute jointly with their UPC to the management of the sick. Hospitals will begin to deny services. Who ends up affected? Sick members who cannot travel. “The government of life.”

Political analyst Héctor Riveros joined the voices of rejection: “The interventions of the superintendencies have become true indirect expropriations. All the entities, health, public services that have been intervened have been looted and liquidated. They are not cleaned up and returned to their owners as they should be.”

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