Opposition Blocks Petro’s Health Care Reform in Colombia’s Congress

Written on 12/16/2025
Josep Freixes
The conservative opposition in Congress sinks the healthcare reform, the flagship project of the Petro government in Colombia. Credit: @MinSaludCol / X.com.

The Colombian Congress witnessed this Tuesday yet another demonstration of its fractured balance of power and, just months ahead of the 2026 legislative and presidential elections, its inability to build consensus around one of the Government’s most ambitious social reforms: the transformation of the health care system.

After months of debates, tensions, and technical adjustments, the Senate’s Seventh Committee decided to shelve—once again—the proposal put forward by President Gustavo Petro to reconfigure the health care model, letting it die in the very chamber where, this time, its legislative process was supposed to definitively take off.

The final vote was 8 in favor of shelving the bill and 5 against, a result that underscores the weight of the conservative opposition and independent caucuses in Congress and buries another central piece of the Executive’s political project in its final stretch.

For many analysts, this decision represents not only a legislative setback but also a deep symptom of the crisis of governability and of Petro’s waning ability to align broad sectors of parliament with his agenda for change, launched in 2022. The fall of the health care reform adds to other recent defeats in the legislative branch, such as the rejection of the tax reform and the sinking of other emblematic initiatives, and raises serious questions about the future of social policies in Colombia in the coming months.

Opposition blocks Petro’s health care reform in Colombia’s Congress

The project to reform Colombia’s health care system had been one of the government’s flagship proposals since the beginning of Petro’s term, and it has also been one of its main parliamentary failures, as the initiative struck at the core of a system that for years has placed the management of a system largely financed by the state in private hands.

Its goal was to transform a model in place for two decades, based on the intermediation of Health Promoting Entities (EPS), toward a system more centered on direct provision by the state, with an emphasis on primary care and the elimination of aspects that, according to the reform’s promoters, had turned health care into a business rather than an effective right for all.

However, the initiative faced significant resistance from its earliest debates, especially from those who, despite sharing the need for reform, questioned giving greater weight to the state in management. Technicians and lawmakers from different political forces challenged the clarity of its financing, warned of gaps in the proposed legal structure, and demanded greater guarantees of fiscal sustainability.

Senator Nadia Blel, for example, has been a persistent critical voice insisting on the need for a verifiable fiscal endorsement and the inclusion of social actors in building a broader consensus—something that, according to her arguments, the reform had not fully achieved.

This week’s session was tense, as were past—also unsuccessful—attempts in which the government sought agreements to move the bill forward.

Petro government frustration targets the Senate committee

The Interior Minister, in charge of relations with Congress, harshly attacked the committee’s decision, lamenting that it waited until the last day to sink the initiative without leaving room for its discussion on the floor of the chamber.

“The Senate’s Seventh Committee has acted as it always has: in a low, filthy, and despicable manner. Remember that it was they (the members of this committee) who sank the labor reform, which we revived on the Senate floor and which was approved as law so that workers could have a decent wage,” explained Minister Armando Benedetti in a video posted on his social media after the bill was shelved.

“It turns out that now they hide the health care reform on seven occasions only to, on the last day, like bandits, like thieves under cover of night, shelve the reform. What they are doing is vulgar,” he snapped in a harsh reaction against a committee whose operation has indeed prevented debate on the Senate floor.

The minister’s statements reflect the government’s frustration with what it sees not only as a political blockade but as an act that, from its perspective, puts the health of millions of Colombians at risk.

For his part, Health Minister Guillermo Jaramillo directly accused the conservative opposition of lacking any willingness to engage in dialogue and of using tactics simply to block the processing of this important law.

“For seven months they dragged out the debate, hid the discussion, and waited until the last day to shelve the health reform. Those who voted to do so voted against the Colombian people. They believe the damage is done to the government of Gustavo Petro. They are mistaken,” Jaramillo wrote on his X account following the government’s parliamentary defeat.

“The damage is done to millions of Colombians who remain trapped in a system that has already failed and that you decided to protect. You had a reform with fiscal backing, guaranteed resources, and historic increases in health funding. Even so, you chose to defend particular interests. Health care is not shelved. And the country does not forget,” he concluded.

The opposition defends its blocking stance

For their part, the senators who voted in favor of shelving the reform defended their position as an act of responsibility toward public finances and the stability of the health care system as it currently exists. Among them were figures from opposition parties such as the Centro Democrático, the Partido Liberal, the Partido Conservador, and other independent groups, who argued that the proposal lacked solid technical backing and that its approval could deepen the system’s problems rather than solve them.

The opposition insisted that the reform, as presented, raised fundamental questions about how a more state-centered care model would be financed and how services would be guaranteed without neglecting the system’s current obligations. Senator Honorio Henríquez, for example, described the vote as a way to “save the health and lives of Colombians,” while pointing to the risks of a poorly structured bill that, in his view, could generate greater instability.

“The shelving of the healthcare reform is the result of being responsible with the health and lives of Colombians,” said Senator Henríquez, who accused the government of promoting “an explicit crisis to suffocate the system, where there are no medicines, treatments are suspended, the UPC [the unit of account the government uses to pay the EPS per enrollee in the health system] is not adjusted, there are already 2,033 deaths from rare diseases, and to top it off, they do not have the money to finance the reform.”

The opposition senator concluded his argument with a mocking tone toward the president, asserting that Gustavo Petro “said that the reforms could be carried out with the current laws and that they did not need Congress. Just audacity and determination—where did his audacity and determination go to guarantee Colombians’ right to health?”

A healthcare system facing the abyss of an election year in Colombia

The decision by the Seventh Commission leaves Colombia’s health care system on the brink of an even greater collapse, several experts and social leaders fear, after many years of crisis and the complete absence of political consensus to seek alternatives that would prevent the collapse of such a sensitive issue for the country.

The reform sought precisely to address the deep financial and care-related crisis that has plagued the sector in recent years, with recurring complaints about access to services, shortages of medicines, and precarious primary care in remote regions. Without a structural reform, many believe these shortcomings will tend to worsen, leaving millions of patients in a vulnerable situation.

Beyond the reasons and arguments on both sides, the imminence of the legislative elections—in March—and the presidential elections—in May and June—next year had already foreshadowed the impossibility that the Senate would approve the most important law of the Gustavo Petro government, which, for its part, has shown a total inability to achieve the consensus that it knew such an endeavor requires in order to succeed.