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Health Reform/Emergencia Social February 8, 2010 at 8:41 pm (Politics and I) · Edit Colombia’s president, Alvaro Uribe, declared on December 2009 a Social Emergengy (Emergencia Social) in the country’s health system. Uribe’s intentions was to fix the $500 thousand million Pesos, the equivalent to approx. $300 million US dollars, deficit. Colombian workers are obliged to register to a health provider and pay a monthly fee based on his/her income. These health providers changed into a private administration after law reforms during the 1990′s. Under the private administration of the EPS (entidad prestadora de salud – Health Provider) health services have been apparantly manipulated. I will have to say that since I’ve been in the country for less than a year, my understanding of the situation comes from reading and listening to different arguments available. I would need to bring more details about the Ley 100 to you, the reader, in order to get more in depth with the reforms made in the past. These current reforms eliminate the possibilities for citizens to bring legal meausres, such as the “Tutela”, to request full coverage of treatments and medicines. The Tutela is a Colombian legal process where every citizen can demand his/her basic rights are protected (http://www.lablaa.org/blaavirtual/ayudadetareas/poli/poli47.htm). Under the action of the Tutela, citizens now can ask for the EPS or other health institutions to cover expensive medical treatments such as chimotherapy and other cancer treatments, or to cover their expensive drugs. However, as it always happends, there have been people misusing this legal tool and trying to get advantage to get health providers to cover cosmetic or other unecessary medical treatments like plastic surgery to enhance ones body. Therefore, I could not denied that this has created a deficit and misuse of founds and resources in the Colombian health system. Nonetheless, the new reforms would take the legal resource of Tutela away from the citizens and ask them to pay for necessary medical needs with their retirement funds and other “social security” benefits. Thus, besides paying a monthly fee to the Helth provider, the worker might have to loose his/her pensions or savings in the case that he/she gets sick with an illness that the health system considers too expensive and decides to cover any treatment. Haiti on the world’s map. January 27, 2010 at 4:17 am (Uncategorized) · Edit I wonder how many of us have known the rich history of Haiti. How many knew that it was at one point a lush productive agricultural country, the first nation in the Americas to grant frreedom and civil rights to the slave population. I just want to say that I only hope that after all this painful devastation in Haiti we can see a great nation rebuilding itself stronger and prouder. I am attaching this link to the photographs of a friend who is in Haiti right now bringing to the world what the current situation is. http://www.apimages.com look for international news, and click on Photographers search: Ariana Cubillos