Sura, with more than five million users, is one of the largest Health Promotion Entities (EPS) in Colombia. The company reported this Tuesday that it formally requested the Government of Gustavo Petro to withdraw from the social health security system. In other words, Sura is exploring a profound transformation that will allow it to stop serving as the member and insurer of 1 in 10 Colombians, in the midst of the crisis that has shaken the system.
After a shareholders’ meeting in Bogotá, EPS Sura announced that it had filed this Tuesday with the National Superintendency of Health the request for authorization for the withdrawal of the general social health security system in Colombia. It proposes doing so through a progressive clearing program, a legal mechanism that allows removal in an “orderly and diligent” manner, its spokespersons emphasized. “We have made a great effort to continue in the system protecting the health of our members (…) however, time has run out. Measures must be taken to avoid further deterioration that prevents EPS Sura from complying with its obligations,” they stated.
“The country spends more than the health system has available to pay for it. The inadequate financing of our health system is historical and structural,” which compromises its sustainability, stressed Juana Francisca Llanos, president of the insurer Suramericana SA, owner of the EPS, during a press conference to explain the request, which must be approved by the Superintendency. “We seek to anticipate to avoid what happened with other EPS, implement timely measures for an orderly transfer of our members and responsibly manage obligations with suppliers and providers such as clinics, IPS and hospitals,” she added.
Already in April, the EPS Compensar, with 2.2 million users, had voluntarily requested its liquidation due to “the complex financial situation” that the health system that President Petro intends to reform is going through at any cost. Although Congress sank its flagship reform of the sector, the Government has already intervened three other EPS, as the public-private insurers that administer the system are called: Sanitas, Nueva EPS and EPS Western Health Service (SOS), the latter of the department from the Cauca Valley. The Government has outlined its intention to present to Congress a new, more consensual health reform, which had already been agreed upon with the majority of the EPS, including Sura itself. However, for now the project has not been filed, at a time when other of its major reforms remain stuck in the Legislature.
Acemi, the EPS union of the contributory system, almost immediately regretted the news. For almost a year, “the EPS Sura, Sanitas and Compensar warned the National Government about the deep financial crisis they were facing,” Ana María Vesga, president of the association, wrote in X. The directors of these three EPS, which together served 13 of the 50 million inhabitants of Colombia, warned at the time that the money that the State gives them is insufficient to manage the health system and cover their basic needs. “Today the country receives the news of the voluntary withdrawal of Sura, which is added to that of Compensar and the intervention of Sanitas by the National Government in the month of April. We are witnessing the destruction of the country’s greatest social advance in its entire history. Irreversible,” Vesga lamented.
President Petro himself also did not take long to react, also on X, his favorite communication channel. “The health system with financial intermediation of public resources is unsustainable. The Senate rejected the reform that could sustain it,” the president expressed in a series of messages in which he blamed the Legislature for the evident crisis. “In recent months, the Senate turned its back on solving the health problem of Colombians. This damage is very serious and must be repaired as soon as possible,” he insisted, without clarifying whether he intends to present a new legislative project. The current health system has functioned since 1993 as an insurance model in which the State transfers resources to promoting companies so that they manage and administer the health services of citizens in clinics and hospitals. Since he came to power, Petro has insisted on the urgency of changing that model that he describes as “mercantile,” and that faces a systematic lack of money to provide all the services guaranteed by the State.
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“The damage was not done by the Senate,” Alejandro Gaviria, who was Juan Manuel Santos’ Health Minister for six long years and then Petro’s own Minister of Education for a few months, refuted on social networks. “The Government did it, which substantially aggravated the crisis. He insisted on meaningless reform. And now he has Colombia’s health in intensive care. “He destroyed without building anything,” wrote the official who has held the Health portfolio in Colombia for the longest time. “They began to improvise and play ideological games with the lives of millions of people.”
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