If you’ve been following Colombia’s health care troubles, a new report should give you pause. Consulting firm FrontierView has concluded that the country’s health system currently lacks the financial muscle to liquidate the EPS—the private insurers that manage public health funds and coordinate patient care—that the government has already placed under state intervention due to financial distress.
According to the analysis, none of the intervened EPS, including Nueva EPS (the nation’s largest, with millions of members), shows signs of being able to recover on its own in the near term. Just as troubling, the report finds that healthy EPS providers wouldn’t have the capacity to absorb a sudden, large-scale transfer of patients either, meaning any mass liquidation could overwhelm both remaining insurers and the hospitals and clinics that actually deliver care.
This creates a tough dilemma for President Abelardo De la Espriella’s administration. Speaking at a governors’ summit on September 4, De la Espriella said EPS deemed financially viable and capable of delivering quality care could be rehabilitated, while those that fail to meet those standards would need to be wound down in an orderly fashion. But the new findings suggest that orderly path may be harder to execute than officials hope, given how limited the alternatives are for relocating affected patients.
For the full details, read the original report at El Tiempo.
Source: Informe advierte que el sistema de salud no tendría margen para liquidar las EPS intervenidas (eltiempo.com). English version produced with AI assistance.
Image: Presidencia de la República Mexicana, BY 2.0 (via Openverse).