Chile has a long awaited opportunity to vote for a new public and universal healthcare system
BMJ 2022; 378 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o2146 (Published 02 September 2022) Cite this as: BMJ 2022;378:o2146
- Luis Ignacio De La Torre Chamy, president1,
- Camila Micaela Escobar Liquitay, senior researcher2,
- Eva Madrid, professor3,
- Juan Víctor Ariel Franco, research associate4
- 1Valparaiso Regional Council, Chilean College of Physicians, Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, School of Medicine, Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile.
- 2Research department, Instituto Universitario Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- 3Interdisciplinary Centre for Health Studies CIESAL, Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile.
- 4Institute of General Practice, Medical Faculty, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany.
In October 2019, Chileans took to the streets to protest about ongoing problems such as social justice, socio-economic inequalities, and poor quality healthcare. They demanded a new constitution.12 As a result, a constitutional assembly was elected to develop a new constitution, and it has proposed a draft new constitution to be voted on 3 September 2022. One of the main changes includes a comprehensive reform of the healthcare system which was established in 1981 under the last military dictatorship (1973-1989). It allowed people to choose to fund either public or private insurers, which established the widespread privatisation of the healthcare system and gave preferential access to those who could afford it.3 In the past 20 years, several initiatives have countered this process, including the Health Guarantees Act (2000), which mandated that all providers must guarantee high quality care for priority health conditions. This was later expanded with the Catastrophic Illnesses Act (2015).34
Currently, 17% of the …