Chilean healthcare companies on brink
May 31, 2023
Chile’s private health care companies, known as Isapres, are on the brink of collapse following a Supreme Court ruling last year that demanded they compensate clients for years of overcharges, estimated to cost of about $1.4 billion.
The ruling deemed the firms’ practise of setting premiums based on gender and age as unconstitutional. Additionally, it prohibited insurers from charging for coverage of children under the age of 2.
Regulators were given until the end of this month to design a repayment system for the companies. However, they requested an extension, arguing compliance would bankrupt them and lead to the collapse of Chile’s healthcare system. The country’s public healthcare system is already overwhelmed and unable to cope with an influx from the private sector.
While the Boric administration insists that the firms must comply with the ruling, the issue has become a headache for the government. Earlier this month, Chile’s government introduces a fast-track bill designed to chart a way out of the situation while also strengthening regulator oversight and public health.
However, this situation poses a political dilemma for the Boric administration, as they do not want to appear lenient towards the private companies. While campaigning in 2021, Boric laid out plans to move toward a unified national health-care system under which the Isapres wouldn’t exist.
Opposition politicians have accused the Boric administration of intentionally angling to collapse private insurers in order to fulfill his campaign promise. In turn, the government supporters say an alternative Senate proposal, whichwould permit insurers to recalculate their plans is a way of granting them amnesty (“perdonazo”).
(Bloomberg, Bloomberg, El País)
More Chilean Politics
A Cadem poll found that 77 percent of Chileans prefer a long-term payment plan that saves the Isapres.
A scandal involving the costs of a pilot plan to provide gas canisters through a state company — which apparently cost more than obtaining them on the private market — has been politically costly for Boric. Opponents use the case as a criticism for the government’s plans to create a state lithium company or a public healthcare system.
Chile’s Expert Commission finishes Draft
Chile’s Expert Commission finished a constitutional proposal on Friday. The Congressionally appointed group has been working for three months on a draft that will provide a template for the elected Constitutional Council, which is dominated by right-wing delegates, to create a new constitutional proposal to be voted on in December.
While delegates can rewrite the draft, they must stick to 12 constitutional “borders,” including the definition of the country as “a social and democratic state governed by the rule of law.”
The draft, 14 chapters and 128 pages, also recognizes Indigenous peoples as “part of the Chilean nation, which is one and indivisible.” The document also ratifies the bicameral Congress, and creates a 5% floor for political parties to obtain legislative seats, an effort to reign in political fragmentation.
"It is a Constitution that is not the dream Constitution for any of us, but a Constitution under which we all feel that we can live together and that we feel as our own," said the Expert Commission President Verónica Undurraga.
The draft also includes the right to housing.
In general terms, the draft provides few determinations, and would lend itself for future administrations to implement their own visions of government.
More Constitution
Forty-six percent of respondents would vote against the new constitutional proposal in December, according to the latest Cadem poll.
Respondents overwhelmingly (98%) agree that the State’s duty is to protect citizen’s safety, and 92% believe people should choose their health system, 85% agree that Indigenous people should be recognized as part of an indivisible Chilean nation.