After the meeting between the president of the Senate, Roy Barrerasand the Minister of Health, Carolina Corkon the morning of Wednesday, March 15, the distance between the two officials ends, which fueled the controversy over divided opinions within the Government, regarding the health reform project.
This is how he would have made it known. also doctor, through networks: “Dialogue and agreement bear fruit and clear the way for fair, viable, deep social reforms that improve the lives of Colombians. Reforms imply transitions. As we have always said: Build on what has been built. Take advantage of the good. Correct the bad. The reason above the emotions”.
The discontent between Corcho and Barreras is based on at least three moments in which the congressman questioned his handling of the initiative, even going so far as to use the qualifiers “ideologized” and “arrogant”, in mid-February 2023. against the minister.
“Minister Corcho, who is an ideologized minister, unfortunately has a characteristic, which is not good and is not fair in any minister, and that is arrogance,” she commented in an interview with El Tiempo.
And, straight away, he commented that Minister Corcho: “broke the dialogueHe imposed his decisions, he did not even listen to his peers in the cabinet, he did not listen to the unions and disqualified them, fueling a kind of revenge reform against what they call the oligarchy”.
The foregoing, before accusing the portfolio manager of disavow the President of the RepublicGustavo Petro, marking the end of the EPS with the initial draft of the reform project.
“I believe that Minister Corcho disavowed the president, because two weeks ago a positive step was taken towards the transition,” Barreras said, while maintaining that “the president is going to defend, and I accompany him in that, a reform to the health that makes a fairer system, but the president and the government announced that the EPS would not disappear ”, he mentioned at this time in an interview for the aforementioned medium.
A few days before, the minister had socialized before the National Academy of Medicine and 14 other organizations the initiative and, in unfortunate statements, blamed the sector for the fiscal situation they are currently going through:
“Each service provider is going to have a self-regulatory board. Self-regulatory board of doctors, where doctors go to monitor other doctors. The fiscal problem of this system is not the mayors and governors, it is the doctors. Because the doctor can trigger public spending if he commands everything; the doctor induces the level of demand at the primary level”.
His accusations generated rejection among some professionals in the health sector, including Barreras, who at the time considered it necessary to apologizeon behalf of the Government, with the union:
“I am a doctor. As a colleague I apologize… You save lives every day… we applaud you in the pandemic… they risked their lives and now they are the culprits?”, he wrote on his Twitter account, as a description along with a video in which he listen to the minister’s statements.
However, not even a month passed, since they exposed their differences, until managed to arrange a meeting a “breakfast for peace”, as a reference Blue Radioto discuss their disagreements on how the new health system in Colombia should be structured.
“The absence of dialogue with the minister was overcome and it was agreed to promote the best possible reform so that Colombians have better health,” concluded Barreras.
Who, it is worth remembering, has not been the first nor the only supporter of the Government in express their objections to the project. Before him, the former Minister of Education, Alexander Gaviriahad already widely criticized the reform, which is why he ended up leaving the presidential cabinet.
