The Chilean Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Luis Cordero Vega, referred this Wednesday to the sentence that obliges the health insurers to pay a million-dollar debt to their clients for excessive charges, and stressed that in Chili “The sentences are fulfilled, whether they like it or not.”
The minister expressed himself in this way in an EFE-Casa de América Tribune held in Madrid, where he analyzed the possibilities that these private companies have to face the judicial ruling of 2022 of the Supreme Court that obliges them to return to their clients 1,400 million dollars for overcharges since 2019.
Last week Chilean President Gabriel Boric said that “will not validate a pardon” private health insurers, known as Isapres, and claimed to be “available to listen to the alternatives” that they propose to solve the crisis they face.
The Isapres market, highly concentrated in six companies, was created in 1981 as part of the neoliberal reforms established by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) and, according to experts, up to 18% of the population is linked to they.
The Chilean government presented a bill on May 9 that seeks to comply with the judicial ruling, with which it intends to establish a mechanism for fixing the prices of health plans.
The insurers, to whom the Supreme Court extended the term by six months to pay the debt, denounce that the Government’s proposal will mean the end of the industry and that the debt they must pay is four times their current assets and is equivalent to the total profits generated in the last 33 years
According to what the head of Justice said today, Congress is the body that can give “more rationality and representativeness to solve the problem”, “since directly applying the sentence could generate an immediate effect on the solvency of the insurers and have a domino effect”.
In turn, the Supreme Court will meet next Monday, May 29, because “He has been asked for a pronouncement” on the proposals to enforce the ruling, but the minister considered “difficult” that this organ “return on a sentence that has already been issued” and that he agreed with the clients of the Isapres.
The sentence “is complied with”, the modality is yet to be defined
Lamb explained that “the heart of this discussion is very old”, because it resides “in the way in which the private sector participates in health services” from the country.
“The public debate has been opting to find a solution, since the bankruptcy of the insurers would have a detrimental effect; With ups and downs this agreement has been generated, what is the modality is what must be defined “he inferred.
Despite this, the minister was firm on the obligation of these companies to comply with the judgment of the Court, although he specified that “many are waiting” to the new pronouncement “to find out how broad is the spectrum that allows Congress to make a decision without failing to comply with the ruling.”
“A basic rule is at stake, the sentences are handed down, they may like it or not, but they have to be complied with”insisted Cordero, lawyer and law professor.
In this sense, the Minister of Justice stressed that part of the current public debate focuses on “the formula” in which insurers must face failure, “Because what is not under discussion is to pretend that a sentence is not complied with: “it is not possible, nobody would think of not respecting a judicial sentence”.
Despite the forcefulness of the words of the minister and also of President Boric, the case does not seem close to being closed: “Insurers have said that they have applied the law and have not yet answered how they are going to comply with the sentence”said Lamb.
Source: EFE
Source: Gestion
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