Public Health, State Crime in Mexico

One of the sectors in which President López has sought to further damage Mexico, irreparably, and, sinisterly, with success, is public health. The most brutal blow was the destruction of Seguro Popular. Mexico registered notable progressive advances in public health services since the creation of IMSS in 1943, until the development of Seguro Popular in 2003, which allowed more than 50 million people living in poverty to enter the public health system. They were truly meritorious achievements that the resentful and Manichaean rhetoric of President López has tried to revile. General mortality was significantly reduced thanks to health education, universal vaccination, and physical and human care infrastructure for the population in the form of a stratified system of clinics, hospitals, and Health Institutes (pediatrics, cardiology, oncology, respiratory diseases, traumatology, nutrition, infectious diseases), and the training and deployment of doctors throughout the country. In fact, the coverage of medical services reached 90% of the population in 2018, which influenced the fact that from 1950 to 2018 the life expectancy of Mexicans increased from 43 to 75 years, which is an indicator of public health. spectacular, eloquent and representative. For its part, and according to CONEVAL, poverty due to lack of health services in Mexico fell from 50 million people in 2000 to only 20 million in 2018.

Faced with this, the government of President López maliciously proposed the debasement of the health system, with incapable officials (in a true Kakistocracy – the government of the worst), the brutal deterioration of health institutions and services, and its systematic destruction, including the dismantling of the mechanisms for purchasing and distributing medicines. All this is something truly difficult to understand and interpret without resorting to hypotheses of delusional resentment, riotous mind, and psychopathy, above all, because it has implied leaving tens of millions of Mexicans without medical services, without medications, and without attention to catastrophic illnesses. that can bankrupt families. Everything, justified with the fillers of the “neoliberal regime”, of an alleged “corruption” never proven, and with the disqualification of excellent professionals and academics who were in charge of the health system for decades (Soberón, Kumate, Frenk, Córdova, Chertorivsky, Mercedes Juan, Ramón de la Fuente, José Narro). In his world of lies and grotesque vulgarities, López even promised that, thanks to his government, Mexico would have a health system “like Denmark’s.” He started with a 2019-2024 Health Sector Program that is truly programmatic and rhetorical garbage, without analysis or diagnosis, and overflowing with lies and falsehoods. Amidst the ruins and debris left by the destruction of the health system, President López clumsily and chaotically created INSABI (now in charge of a mediocre “archaeologist”), with a monopolistic, bureaucratic and centralized character, which fails to provide tertiary health services, for more than 70 high-cost ailments, granted by Seguro Popular. President López also cut the health sector budget in real terms, figures that are covered up by transfers to the Ministry of Health from the Fund for Catastrophic Illnesses of Popular Insurance (45 billion pesos), which was looted and destroyed. Thanks to INSABI and the corrupt and inept centralization of drug purchases in the SHCP and UNOPS of the UN (as if Mexico were Haiti); there are not enough medicines or vaccines, and previously eradicated diseases such as measles and smallpox have reappeared. Maternal deaths have increased, and there is a considerable increase in non-COVID mortality, while citizens are impoverished with enormous spending on medicines and private medical services. Thousands of children with cancer have died for lack of medicine and medical care. A crime against humanity. In order to transfer budgets to megalomaniac and absurd projects (Maya Train, Dos Bocas, Santa Lucía) and to massive subsidies and patronage handouts, López disappeared the Undersecretary for Integration and Development of the SSA, and demoted the Federal Commission for Protection against Sanitary Risks (COFEPRIS). ), introducing it to the Undersecretary of the ineffable Gatell (Prevention and Health Promotion). This is terrible for health strategy, health care quality and safety, program monitoring and evaluation, and accountability.

The damage that President López has done to the health system is unprecedented in the civilized world. He will have to be held accountable and face justice for fraud, ineptitude and stupidity. (Octavio Gómez Dantés published an excellent and heartbreaking article about it in Nexos last year, and on which much of this column is based).

@g_quadri