Colombia: Congress Shelves Petro’s Controversial Leftist Healthcare Reform

Colombian far-left President Gustavo Petro suffered a major defeat on Wednesday after the Colombian Congress voted to shelve his controversial leftist healthcare reform bill, with nine members of the corresponding Senate commission voting in favor and five against.

Petro, a former member of the Marxist M19 guerilla, took office as Colombia’s first leftist president ever in August 2022. Since then, his government has attempted to impose widespread leftist healthcare, as well as political, economic, and social reforms to Colombia’s governance.

The healthcare reform, one of Petro’s flagship reform projects, contemplated drastic changes to Colombia’s 30-year old healthcare system that would have granted the state a larger control of Colombia’s healthcare resources, facilities, and programs while severely diminished the role and function of private providers in the country. 

The now-shutdown controversial healthcare reform was at the forefront of a series of recurring peaceful protests carried out by thousands of Colombian civilians and opposition politicians across several of the nation’s main cities. The most recent nationwide peaceful protest against Petro’s proposed leftist reforms took place in early March, with more than 50,000 participants peacefully expressing their rejection of Petro’s leftist reform plans.

One of the arguments reportedly espoused by the Colombian government to justify the need to reform Colombia’s healthcare system is that the current system is “not equitable” for those living in rural areas of the country. However, the Senate commission, in Wednesday’s vote, asserted that the bill did not address such issues.

“The illusion we had was that the health reform would be a peace agreement and change for all, but unfortunately it was not so and the reform presented by the government divided the country,” Colombian Sen. Norma Hurtado, who voted to shelve the bill, said on Wednesday.

After the controversial healthcare reform was shelved, Petro stated that it’s “up to us to solve the transition” to a new healthcare system for Colombia, warning that the so-called transition will now be “sudden.”

“Now it is up to us to solve it. What could have been a calm, orderly and problem-free agreement, making a transition, now has to be a sudden one,” Petro said. “Why and for what? When what we have in our hands are human lives.”

Petro immediately responded to the bill’s archiving with an intervention of two of Colombia’s largest state-owned healthcare insurance providers, who combined, have more than 16 million insured Colombians. Opposition politicians criticized the intervention, arguing that it would give the Colombian government greater control over the nation’s healthcare system, allowing Petro to implement some of his planned health reforms via decrees.

Petro, who has been unable to pass any of his leftist reforms in Congress, threatened on March with calling a Constituent Assembly that would rewrite Colombia’s Constitution and codify his reforms into a new core legal structure for the country.

Colombian Health Minister Guillermo Jaramillo called for a Constituent Assembly on Wednesday right as the bill was being archived by the Colombian Senate commission.

“We have no problem, that’s why we are in a constituent process, where else can we go, to a constituent process,” Jaramillo told reporters.

Petro’s calls for a Constituent Assembly to rewrite Colombia’s constitution to implement his far-left reforms echo actions taken by other leftist governments in the region that have carried out similar plans to implement socialist laws at a constitutional level in the past, such as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.