The health reform was one of Gustavo Petro’s pet projects. He promoted it from rally to rally before he came to power and when he assumed the presidency of Colombia, in the middle of the summer of 2022, he decided to put it before two other of his great plans. … of change for the country: labor and pensions. His failure in Congress has especially hurt him. So much so that the president has not stopped since then – almost two months now – from attacking who he considers guilty of this political defeat. This is the Vitorian businessman Joseba Grajales, president of the Keralty group, the former Sanitas International Organization, which he accuses of having “financed” several of the parties that at the beginning of last April voted against the remodeling of the Colombian health system. . “That Spanish gentleman,” he tells her in his speech.
Keralty has the former Basque Minister of Health Jon Darpón in its ranks – according to the organizational chart posted on its own website, he is in charge of one of the “transversal presidencies”, that of Infrastructure – and is today a giant of private healthcare in Latin America , where it landed in the eighties precisely through Colombia. Currently he serves in Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Puerto Rico… and has even reached the United States and the Philippines. At the end of 2023, the company reports, it would exceed 10.3 million users, and only in the country of Petro it will have close to 6.9 million associates and around 24,000 employees. An empire that, the Colombian president maintains, has been built on lies towards his compatriots. “We are telling this Spanish man to stop deceiving his members by saying that we are going to destroy their health,” the president denounced in an event on May 1 dotted with direct accusations towards Grajales.
The reform proposed by Petro, the first left-wing leader to take command of Colombia, had in its sights the private health insurance system that has operated in the country since the 1990s and which he sought to replace with a model based in the public to reach all citizens. A change that implied, for example, the end of intermediation by the so-called Health Promotion Entities (EPS) so that the money that the State allocates to health would go directly from their coffers to the hospitals. Under the Keralty umbrella, EPS Sanitas operates – the second most important in the nation, with thirty years of experience – which, just one day before Congress ruled on the president’s star project, was intervened by the State. The Executive took control of another, Nueva EPS, outside this group, during the course of the vote.
Grajales, who is considered a man very close to the PNV, has not publicly referred to the trail of accusations about alleged payments to congressmen, but he has spoken out about the intervention of EPSSanitas. In a video published by the Colombian newspaper ‘El Heraldo’ he showed his “deep dismay” at a situation that he called “unfair.” “With a heavy heart but full of determination,” said the businessman, who began his career in the energy sector and founded the companies Guascor (engines) and Gamesa (wind turbines) – he got rid of both – before starting a business in healthcare. private. The newspaper ‘El Mundo’ placed him this same year in 239th place on the list of the richest in Spain, with a net worth of about 265 million euros. ‘Forbes’ also usually includes him in its ranking of millionaires and in 2019 he starred on the cover of the magazine in Colombia.
More than a year of procedures
Among those close to the president who are most critical of Grajales after the fiasco of the project to remodel the health system, Wilson Arias stands out. This senator from the Historical Pact, the coalition of left-wing and center-left groups that brought Petro to power, defends that the businessman has “elite connections” and acts as “a merchant of life.” “He donated hundreds of millions of pesos to Colombian parties that sank the reform,” he commented on social networks just one day after Congress rejected a revolution in the health model to keep it out of private hands and support it in prevention and primary care. from the public. This ‘no’ is, without a doubt, the biggest blow that the president has suffered so far, who launched the initiative as soon as he formed his government team. In fact, the proposal had been in legislative process for fifteen months when it finally fell by the vote of nine senators.
The Colombian Government defends that its initiative intended to make healthcare accessible to all citizens
“Keralty, being foreigners, financed the campaigns of several congressmen and financed the political parties that today oppose social reforms,” Petro insisted. According to different media, the group and another company (Bolívar, also owner of an EPS) would have paid more than 336,000 euros in the 2022 electoral campaign to the groups – except one, Mira – that voted against the project. But the truth is that the remodeling of the Colombian health system did not start on the right foot, not even within the Executive. The president’s efforts to move it forward caused a huge crisis in his own cabinet that led to the departure of his three most moderate ministers and also shattered the legislative coalition that allowed him to approve tax changes and his development plan for the country.
