The crisis facing the new model of health care for teachers in Colombia’s public schools is testing the relationship between President Gustavo Petro and the Colombian Federation of Educators (Fecode), the largest union in the country and one of the strongest allies that the president has had since before becoming President. A month after the change in the system defined by the Government and union leaders to ensure medical services to 818,000 members, including teachers and their beneficiaries, the failures continue. The union organization balances to complain about the chaos without directly criticizing the head of state, who appointed the head of the entity responsible for implementation.
The new model promises to go from a system managed by regional operators to integrate a national health network without intermediaries, in which members can go to more than 1,500 health providers throughout the country. It is a scheme similar to what was proposed for all Colombians by the health reform promoted by the left-wing Government as its main political banner and which collapsed in April in the Senate of the Republic. Ultimately, the goal is to improve the care of teachers who have been under a special regime that has not been free of problems and, at the same time, show the benefits of the Executive’s proposal.
According to data from the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, although the payment for each teacher’s health is higher than that made for the rest of the population, the care is inefficient. For example, official figures show that, while the national infant mortality rate is 11.65 per 1,000 live births, among teachers it is 13.49 per 1,000 live births. The rate of complaints per 10,000 members of the teaching profession, almost half of them over 50 years of age, is double that of the general population.
But intentions have not turned into reality so easily. The model was approved on April 1 by the National Fund for Social Benefits of Teachers (Fomag), which is made up of the ministers of Education, Labor and Finance and two representatives of Fecode. The agreement established the start date of the transition on May 1, just one month after approval. In the first few days, instead of decreasing, complaints have increased. Teachers and their families have had to endure treatment interruptions, delays in specialist care and in the delivery of medications.
To defend its members, Fecode has demanded that Fiduprevisora - a company attached to the Ministry of Finance that administers the social benefits of teachers – to expedite the materialization of the agreement, starting with the formation of the care network. “Obviously that structure had to be built. That is where the first problem is because the contracts have not been finalized at the regional level. They have made a total mess of this,” says Martha Rocío Alfonso, Fecode executive. According to Alfonso, the trustee left the dispensing of medications to companies that do not comply with the conditions.
President Petro has also questioned Fiduprevisora for not following his orders. “There are pension officials tied to the previous corrupt model and they still resist taking steps to change the model, trying to perpetuate what definitely did not work,” he expressed in his X account.
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The president of Fiduprevisora is Mauricio Marín, a lawyer appointed by President Petro, who has been questioned for having come to office as a quota of traditional parties and for having faced investigations for corruption as general director of the Social Liability Fund of National Railways of Colombia.
“It would be worth reminding the Minister of Health that it was President Gustavo Petro who not only appointed Jhon Mauricio Marín, member of the La U Party and the Conservative Party, to manage Fiduprevisora…. Petro gave him the nonsense of 90 billion pesos from Fiduprevisora, of which 13 billion are for the health of the teaching profession,” criticized Chamber representative Jennifer Pedraza, left-wing but critical of the Government, in a political control debate. to the Minister of Health, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo. At the hearing, Jaramillo sought to free the president from responsibility.
Despite his closeness to the powerful union, the president has also accused a majority of the Fecode executive committee of having delayed supporting the change of model. “…In speech they are Petrists but in practice they sabotage him and give more arguments to the extreme right to try to discredit the Government and regain power,” he assured.
Fecode has responded that it is false to hold it accountable and called an extraordinary meeting to evaluate the situation and demand new measures from the Government. “The transition stage for its implementation to date has generated difficulties, uncertainties, conflicts, tensions in the territories, disputes between the new and the status quothe public and the private, between the old providers and the new entities that offer the service,” said the union, which has around 270,000 members among the 312,000 state teachers in the country.
In addition to the board, local teachers unions have carried out 24-hour strikes and demonstrations in departments such as Quindío, Caldas, Risaralda and a sit-in in front of the Fiduprevisora offices in Bogotá. Alfonso, the spokesperson for Fecode, however, says that they have not distanced themselves from the Government. “There has been a demand from Fecode to intervene and provide concrete solutions. Even the requirement that the Fiduprevisora board make substantive decisions. We have not lost the essence of representation of education workers, but we are clear that we have to move forward with the model because it is a commitment to transform what we have complained about so much to improve the health of the teaching profession,” she says.
President Petro maintains that the new model has not failed. “34 managers have been appointed to implement the reference centers, one in each department, and the hiring of departmental networks of public and private hospitals and clinics has begun to care for teachers and their beneficiaries in complex events. The teacher will be able to choose the doctor he wants in his region for complex events. The health superintendency will sanction any IPS or medication managers that do not serve teachers,” he explained in a social media report this Sunday, looking for a waiting period.
Fecode – the union that made a donation of 500 million pesos (about $125,000) to the ruling Colombia Humana party that allegedly entered Petro’s presidential campaign by violating legal limits – has been one of the forces that has most promoted the mobilizations to favor of the president in his low hours. This time are not the best hours for Fecode either: reasons have been added to raise their voices against the Government that they have supported, due to errors in the transition to a health model that their directors also approved and that, until now, does not show good results. results.
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