Do we really know what the reform going through the House of Representatives will do to health? The Treasury says yes, and to prove this it has published a calculation of the costs and the sources of their coverage. According to the Treasury Department, there is a major gap in health care accounts that is scheduled to be closed in 2028. The Ministry of Finance has not presented a favorable tax concept, as was the case with the pension reform.
These figures on the impact of the health care reform are based on a fundamental assumption: that the costs of treatments, medical services, medicines, system administration, hospital services and hospitality in health centers, etc. are predictable after the passage of the reform.
It’s a heroic assumption. Health care reform portends a change in the direction and governance of the system so profound and unpredictable that all existing cost controls will be relaxed.
We are doomed to suffer cost inflation, deterioration in the quality of appointments, deterioration in care, deterioration in quality and failure to deliver on the promise of value to such an extent that it is not known what will really be called “health service” after the reform is approved. It is not known how high the basic prices and thus the total costs will be.
For this reason, members of Congress do not fully understand (not even superficially) the consequences of those who advocate them, since they are stuck in vats of jam that do not allow them to lift their heads to breathe. Much less to think about.
Let’s put it graphically. If the government, now so meat-obsessed, left the management of the country’s meat supply, setting the prices at which they buy the meat and the cost at which they buy the meat to the governors and mayors so that it’s the families reached, after such an intervention it would be uncertain how the supply would work and what the prices for the meat would be. Neither the mayors nor the governors know anything about the meat industry, nor are their administrations trained to handle the challenge, and incentives will be so perverse that the 1,120 mayors and 32 governors would quickly become the largest ranchers in the country.
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That is the extent of the mistake one would make if they were to be trusted to process meat for the Colombians. In the previous paragraph, please change the word “meat” to the word “health”.
The health care reform is the subject of criticism that made the recently deceased Nobel Prize winner Robert Lucas famous. Lucas argued that many government interventions change economic reality so profoundly that knowledge of the past loses its validity in predicting the future; and in particular to predict the effects of the intervention being studied.
What we call “health services,” “health care system,” or “health care costs” today does not serve to refer to the same facts in a few years. We will enter an unknown world where there will be deterioration in quality and quantity and unpredictable price increases.
That the government wants to create the complete opposite of a healthcare market itself. That’s the crux of the matter. The government is upset that we can talk about a “health services market”. The government wants to talk about its public provision. He wants to be remembered for stopping being the market and instead becoming the mayor, governor and ministerial official who runs the system.
Therefore, when presenting figures up to 2033, the Ministry of Finance only knows that its technicians have made some calculations in an Excel spreadsheet, taking into account the current health care costs of 51 million Colombians, and adding up some things of the bill, they calculated the money in and -exits into the system, and that’s it, they sent the whole thing to Congress.
Neither the congressmen, nor the Secretary of Health, nor the Treasury, nor Petro, nor Robert Lucas (RIP), nor the experts know what will be approved, because what is called health today and what is paid (for) by the UPC (Unit of Health). “Payment by Capitation”) will change so much as a result of the reform that these lines in the diagrams and these numbers will be of little meaning.
Stupidity is not knowing what you are doing and yet insisting on doing it. The stupid endorsement of a text with the pompous name “health care reform” does not mean that those who want to approve it really know what they are doing, nor what we are going to name it with the word “health.”
Prices, payment amounts and quality of services will change so drastically and unpredictably that what is being said about them today is nothing more than nonsense.
Chávez also described the health reform as destroying Venezuela’s health. Chávez also called the PDVSA reform the destruction of PDVSA. Chávez also called 21st century socialism the catastrophe of the Venezuelan economy. Chávez also called prosperity the social catastrophe that led seven million Venezuelans to leave their country to feed their children. Maduro still describes democracy as the pantomime of the people who cast their votes to elect him forever.
The Colombian Congress cannot maintain the charade of advocating the destruction of the health system and calling it reform.
When voting or forming a quorum, members of Congress should remember that their relatives, their children and their parents are getting sick like the rest of Colombians, and that in the queues for an appointment or care, the lack of gauze, aspirin or surgery, We will remember that they were the stupid enablers of this Colombian health debacle. Forgive them, sir, for they do not know what they are doing. I think future patients will not find it easy to forgive them.
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