President, please don’t end good things

With regard to the debate on whether EPS should end, and the letters sent by Compensar, Sanitas and Sura to the government indicating their difficult situation, I consider it my duty to tell my story about my experience with Compensar, my EPS.

I have never used their services. I always go to my personal doctor and the bills for their consultations and the medications I have to take every day are rolled over to foreign health insurance worth a lot of money and as I get older the cost will be higher. Further. Also, in order to reimburse any of my invoices, they demanded all sorts of uncomfortable reasons and reluctantly paid if I did a good job. until I decided to leave. I’d rather stay without insurance.

I consulted with my doctor and he suggested that I apply for Compensar’s supplement program, which I did.

“The plan covers long and expensive hospitalizations at clinics like Santa Fe,” he told me.

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A few months ago, I made an appointment with the endocrinologist who has been treating my diabetes. I told him that a doctor in Spain had prescribed me the famous ozone injections, the main function of which was to control diabetes, but they were difficult to obtain because they had become popular because they were said to reduce appetite. In Spain I can only buy three boxes of four injections each (one injection per week) for 180 euros, or $800,000 a box. There are no pharmacies in Bogota.

“In EPS they got them,” my endocrinologist told me.

This is how I request medical appointments from Compensar. They gave it to me two weeks later. I was on time. They told me to go to the machine and I have to pay for the consultation. I wasn’t surprised when the device told me to pay more than $4,500 (a private doctor charges about $300,000). I waited about 10 or 15 minutes. They called me from the doctor’s office. between. I summarized my medical history to the doctor. He prescribed me a bunch of meds I was on (for gastritis, thyroid, blood pressure, lungs, three for diabetes including ozone injections, diuretics, potassium and triglycerides). He made me an appointment to come back in three months for diabetes and high blood pressure control and gave me three months’ worth of orders for three medications that I had to buy at a Compensar pharmacy.

My average monthly drug spend is $988,972 and now I have to add Ozempic to that. In other words, I was prepared for the account to cost me at least $1,700,000, but possibly more, since they told me that the injections are more expensive in Colombia than in Spain.

I wasn’t surprised when Compensar Pharmacy told me the entire bill (including the famous injectables) was worth over $10,000. By the second month, for some reason, my drug bill was down to a little under $5,000.

Although some EPS are not functioning well and healthcare services in various regions are poor and need to be improved, President Petro is right that the ideal of health is preventive and that smart reforms in health are needed to end the provision of quality The EPS for the service would be the most nonsense, which is the case with Compensar as far as I know.

PRESIDENT PETRO: It’s so hard to get companies going, so I beg you, don’t finish them.

www.patricialarasalive.com, @patricialarasa