Wildfire social media rumors that the Instituto Mexicana de Seguro Social (IMSS) health-care program is about to be privatized are way off the mark, several leading figures in Mexico confirmed this week.
Senator Emilio Gamboa Patron, coordinator of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the Senate, said such a move was the farthest thing from the mind of President Enrique Peña Nieto. He called the rumors that the executive branch was about to introduce legislation to take the IMSS and the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE) for government workers private “completely unfounded.”
The IMSS provides health care for around half of Mexico’s population and was founded in 1945. Recent reforms have restructured the benefits of IMSS workers in a bid to reduce the pension burden on the institution. Nonetheless, some economists have warn that unless more ruthless measures are taken to improve IMSS finances, the institution is in danger of going broke. Apart from government subsidies, the health-care provider is largely financed by joint contributions from workers and employers.
Any attempt by the federal government to privatize the IMSS would be a blatant violation of the Mexican Constitution, Antonio Alvarez Esparza, the leader of the Jalisco branch of the country’s largest trade union, the Confederacion Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos (CROC), said this week after the rumors bgan to circulate.
Alvarez added that Mexico’s workers would not accept any measure that tried to fuse the three biggest health-care institutions together, to create a Canadian or European style national health service.
He said the IMSS, the ISSSTE and the Seguro Popular for the self employed, are set up to serve three distinct groups and should not be amalgamated under the one umbrella.