Since February 3, in the office of the Minister of Health, Carolina Corcho, there is a right to petition filed by 7 former health ministers, 11 former vice ministers of the portfolio and a former magistrate of the Constitutional Court. The document has a series of 15 questions that this multidisciplinary group elaborated to know the detail and scope of what was known up to that moment about the bill.
The first unofficial response from the health portfolio to this request indicated that the text of the reform that would reach Congress would resolve most of the concerns. On February 13, the articles were known and the group of former ministers concluded that the text “does not answer the questions that are contained in the right of petition,” according to Augusto Galánformer Minister of Health and co-author of the questionnaire.
The right to petition contains concerns focused on five fundamental axes: participation in the process of consideration, deliberation and approval of the reform; compliance with constitutional minimums of public policy in which the structural reform is framed; reasonableness, proportionality and progressivity of the proposal; transition regime and sustainability of the bill.
Former Minister Galán pointed out some of the aspects on which there is still no answer. “A structural reform requires a transparent public plan with well-defined plans and progress indicators, that is not there. Financing is also needed, as well as defining a clear transition, with mechanisms and tools to monitor progress on the proposed objectives,” said the former government official and today director of the Así Vamos en Salud think tank.
Finally, it was stated that still there is no answer about a true process of citizen participation within the framework of the construction process of the reform that the government advanced in recent months.