BOGOTA: Colombian insurer Sura announced on Tuesday it will withdraw from the country’s health system because the resources it receives from the Colombian government to manage more than 5 million patients are not enough to cover its rising costs.

Opposition leaders decried the company’s decision and accused Colombia’s first leftist government of pressuring the company to take control. Private insurers Forcing Colombians to use publicly owned insurance companies shuts them out of the health care market.

Some politicians also hinted that protests could occur in the coming days against recent measures taken by President Gustavo Petro’s administration to place the health system under state control.

“The crisis of Sura is the crisis of our country,” the influential former president Alvaro Uribe wrote on his X account. “I hope there will be widespread action against these government decisions that are destroying the health sector.”

Under Colombia’s current healthcare system, the country’s government sets rates for health insurance payments, using a formula that largely depends on a person’s monthly income.

Monthly insurance payments are deposited into a government-run fund, and then distributed to insurance companies that manage the patients, and are responsible for paying hospitals and other health care providers to ensure universal health care.

But thousands of complaints are filed each year by Colombians arguing that insurance companies take too long to approve surgeries and other medical expenses, or sometimes even refuse to provide lifesaving treatment.

Hospitals have also complained about mounting debts imposed on them by insurance companies, which have ballooned during the pandemic and currently stand at $1.5 billion.

Petro has said these problems could be solved by removing private insurance companies from the system and replacing them with a government agency that would manage all the country’s patients and pay hospitals directly.

But Colombia’s economy needs legislation to improve Health care structure Colombia’s Congress has rejected it amid concerns that Petro’s proposed reforms would give government bureaucrats too much power over health spending and could lead to mismanagement of resources by the Colombian state, which lacks the personnel and expertise to manage millions of health insurance accounts.

Government critics argue that the government is now attempting to bypass opposition in Congress and implement its reforms by depriving private insurance companies of funding and taking other decisions making it unviable for them to operate in Colombia.

In January, Colombia’s health ministry increased the annual fee it pays insurance companies for each affiliation by 12 percent, while companies warned that these payments would have to rise by at least 15 percent to make their businesses viable.

Then in April the government intervened in two major insurance companies because they were not meeting the financial reserve requirements set by the Superintendent of Health.

Sergio Guzman, a political risk analyst in Bogota, estimates that Colombia’s government now directly or indirectly controls about half of the country’s health insurance accounts. That amount would increase significantly if SURA’s 5 million affiliates were transferred to a government insurance company, he said, as the company completes its withdrawal from the healthcare system.

“The government will go to any lengths to implement the most extreme components of its reform agenda,” Guzmán said, “regardless of the damage that may result.”

Sura’s withdrawal from Colombia’s healthcare system puts thousands of jobs at risk, said Jorge Restrepo, an economist at Bogota’s Javeriana University. Patients’ medical histories would also have to be transferred to another insurance company, which could be a complicated process.

“The ball is now in the government’s court. With its actions it will shape the future of health care in Colombia,” Restrepo said.