“Cartel of COVID-19” in Colombia: Is there a mafia between private clinics and the Duque regime?
For Colombia and its citizens, it is no secret that hospitals have been affected by their cash flow due to the services that were no longer provided, given the capacity reserved to deal with the pandemic
During the last weeks, the pandemic of the new coronavirus in Colombia has generated concern about the health crisis it causes and the total lack of control in massive infections and deaths from the disease. In this context, there is an issue that has shaken the health system: the birth of an alleged mafia that has converted health care into a business and that they call the “Cartel of COVID-19”.
The irregular situation was denounced, at first, by a senator from Congress and by the Minister of Health. However, other voices outside of the structure of the State believe that the alleged cartel is an invention to divert attention to the reopening of the economy — which favors companies and puts the lives of workers at risk — and thus lessen the media impact against the Iván Duque’s uribista regime.
The original complaint was made by the senator of Cambio Radical (Radical Change), Abraham Jiménez, who had already denounced the high costs in the care of patients with coronavirus and also the difference in costs between hospitalization rooms and Intensive Care Units (ICU).
“If a Colombian is hospitalized, the health system pays 10 million pesos. While if you enter an ICU you pay 30 million. As the clinics are empty, they are looking for the fastest way to bill and have liquidity, and that would be to put patients in the ICU”, said Jiménez.
The senator’s theory was widely accepted by Colombian society, from where other comments have been heard like that it’s perhaps worse to get sick from COVID-19 because of the amount that has to be paid for the health care than for the very severity of the coronavirus.
The rejection of this type of practice was widely denounced, especially because Colombians consider that health in that South American country is not a right, but a business.
The situation worsened when the Minister of Health, Fernando Ruíz Gómez, confirmed the possible existence of a “Cartel of COVID-19” in Valle del Cauca, in which the Entidades Promotoras de Salud — EPS — (Health Promoting Entities), would be keeping patients admitted to the ICU by COVID-19, more time than what is really necessary, so as to make money.
Although the minister had originally denied the existence of what became known as the “ICU Cartel”, he now changed his mind. “I don’t feel like there is an incentive right now for clinics to do this”, Gómez said before retracting.
However, he later confirmed in the plenary of the Second Committee of the Senate — on June 4 — the following: “There is an incentive in many hospitals and private clinics to keep patients beyond the time that is needed, and basically, with an incentive purely economic, to have the bed occupied, and to be able to bill the services”.
How much truth is in the story about the ‘Cartel’?
The theory of the ‘Cartel’ or the ‘Cartels’ of COVID-19 became even more widespread when several Colombian media began to publicize this possible irregularity within health centers.
According to the newspaper El Espectador, senator Jiménez’s complaints began in May when he warned that under this assumption, “a possible ‘UCI Cartel’ would be brewing in front of the COVID-19 emergency in Cali, an issue that weakens the municipality’s finances and would represent a risk for the city”.
Doubt began to arise when the strange behavior of the activity in the ICU of Valle del Cauca was observed compared to the rest of the country. By the time the first complaint was made, 844 patients had been hospitalized in Colombia, 215 of them in the ICUs. Of that total, Valle del Cauca had 133 hospitalized and 53 in the ICU.
The scandal reached such a point that the Superintendency of Health (Supersalud) issued a statement on the subject on June 2, indicating that they will strengthen surveillance on patient care in the ICUs.
In the statement, Supersalud urged the EPS to “verify the relevance and the opportunity in admission, stay and discharge in general hospitalization or in the high complexity area, as the case may be”.
For Colombia and its citizens, it is no secret that hospitals have been affected by their cash flow due to the services that were no longer provided, given the capacity reserved to deal with the pandemic.
According to data from the Colombian Association of Hospitals and Clinics (ACHC), on average, income has decreased by half. This lack of income, added to government payments by each inmate in the ICU, would generate a scheme of perverse incentives that may have been taken advantage of by some providers.
But amid the media scandal and the voice of some politicians, Supersalud has not yet announced any progress in the investigation of this complaint. As for the Ministry of Health, it is up to it to clarify which hospitals or clinics have engaged in such practices and impose sanctions on those who have held patients longer than necessary.
When there is smoke…is there a fire?
The other view of this complaint is defended by sectors adverse to the Duque Government, among them the Partido Socialista de Trabajadores de Colombia — PST — (Socialist Workers Party of Colombia), which in an article published on its website, described the “Cartel of COVID-19” as a slander of Minister Ruíz Gómez.
“Several weeks ago, complaints taken out of context began to appear, accompanied by videos in which the existence of a ‘COVID Cartel’ was allegedly proved, basically stating that doctors and health personnel are paid millions to invent cases of Covid, and it even began to be said that in hospitals people are murdered to pass themselves off as infected and collect the million-dollar commission”, explains the PST.
They add that despite not having a single piece of evidence, “many spread these alleged complaints thinking they were critical of the system. Many believed the tale that the government wants to invent cases or generate panic”.
“These messages were circulating on social networks without distinguishing the work of health workers and clinics from the role of EPS. Even the newspaper Voz del Partido Comunista published a note from an alleged complaint, in which — without any class criteria — they drop the cloak of doubt on “the workers in the sector ”, since “little by little they focused on the figure of the doctors, who went from being heroes to assassins in a few weeks”.
The PST adds that, even with the vision they have: “it is not intended to deny the obvious corruption in the health system and that the corrupt take advantage of the tragedies to enrich themselves. It is not intended to deny that privatization commercialized and dehumanized health”.
“Nor can we rule out that aberrant cases have occurred in private clinics, already known for their lousy service and corruption, but the real problem of the health system is the Law 100 and the EPS”, says the PST.
Conspiracy theory so as to apply outsourcing
The PST explains that the statements by the Health Minister, “in which he accuses the intensivist doctors of ‘mishandling the UCIS’ to bill more, without any proof, revealed who benefits from these false news on social networks”.
“It was too coincidental that all these ‘news chains’ appeared just as health workers began to organize and mobilize against Law 100, against the outsourcing that affects 85% of the sector and because of the lack of elements for personal protection”, denounces the PST.
They add that after the minister’s statements “and the slanders on social networks”, death threats and attacks against health personnel started. For this reason, the medical associations have spoken out and demand a rectification and the resignation of the minister.
“It was a dirty campaign sponsored by the uribista sector to discredit the fight of the health workers, putting the population against them, but also giving the idea that the pandemic is not real. While the health workers leave their lives in the UCIs, the corrupt and merchants are enjoying the profits in the comfortable quarantine of their mansions”, he stressed.
The PST denounces that in Colombia the “commercial system of Law 100” only benefits “the owners of private clinics”, because “they are only interested in billing and of course they are overbilling, to take advantage of all this tragedy”.
“This is a reality, but that corruption exists and that capitalists do business taking advantage of the pandemic does not mean that the virus does not exist, that it is not a real threat, or that health personnel are inventing the cases or murdering peopleç Illness and death from the pandemic is a reality, only worsened by these unfortunate situations”, said the PST.
The PST warns that, in the midst of this type of situation, “an effort must be made to differentiate (…) since they are being used to discredit the struggle of health personnel, but also to support the idea that the virus does not exist and other conspiracy theories, to continue reopening the economy”.
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