The failure of Insabi
He Unsavory began operations in January 2020. It was to Provide free medicines and medical care to the population without social securitybut he had several failures. He was in charge of purchasing medicines for the health sector and, without experience, he modified the consolidated acquisition model, which caused delays in the purchase and distribution of supplies, deepening the shortage of medicines in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Under the direction of Julio Ferrer, an official with no expertise in health, but rather in the conservation of historical heritage, Insabi did not function better than Seguro Popular, the program it replaced. On the contrary, in the In the first two years of its operation, the population without access to health services increased: from 20.1 in 2018 to 50.4 million people in 2022.
For Rodolfo de la Torre, the failure of Insabi is explained by the fact that the federal government did not increase the budget for universal health care, even though it planned to include thousands more people, and by the application of a model that centralizes state health services.
“This meant reversing the little progress that had been made previously, with the most adverse consequences: 30 million people losing access to health services“, he points out.
At the time, López Obrador argued that the increase in people without access to health care was a consequence of a poorly posed question to the population about whether they had the right to Seguro Popular or Insabi.
However, other indicators reflect the failure: in 2022, more people sought care in private medical services and also spent more money out of their own pockets on health, explains Axel González, a data researcher at Mexico, How are we doing?
“In 2020 and 2022, when Insabi was active, more people were treated by healers, herbalists, midwives, in alternative care, than the people who were treated at Insabi,”
Axel González, data researcher in Mexico, how are we doing?
Due to the null results, the President decreed the extinction of Insabi in May 2023 and created the public body IMSS Welfare, which previously operated only as an IMSS program in rural communities. Now it is responsible for providing care to the entire population without social security.
According to specialists, IMSS Bienestar is burdened with some mistakes from the past, such as centralization and the lack of increase in the sector’s budget, so In Sheinbaum’s six-year term, she will face challenges to consolidate herselfincrease coverage and get Mexicans to return to public hospitals. “These results and their disappearance are a reflection of the failure that Insabi represented,” stresses researcher González.
A few months before concluding his government, López Obrador himself had to admit that Insabi was a “administrative stumbling block” since its launch. “In the case of health, what we had planned didn’t work there,” he said.
