The historical meaning of the health care reform in Chile

Abstract

The article presents a systemic critique of the proposed Chilean reform proposal which substitutes the solidarity paradigm (world-approved at Alma Ata, in 1978, by the Governments constituting WHO/UNICEF) by a profit-making approach, tributary of the free market paradigm sponsored by international financing institutions (IBRD, Regional Banks). The analysis postulates the Chilean reform to be mostly of a fiscal nature to permit the expansion of national capital investment thus closing its permeation of the services sector, already completed in transport, communications, education and insurance. The review outlines systemic dimensions NOT included in the Reform proposal which correspond to inputs subsystems such as human resources, medicines, modern equipment, infrastructure and technology in information. Finally, the revision describes the epidemiologic referents that public health prescribes for the new demographic transition -based in the human genome’s decoding, biomolecular neurophysiology, and the emergence of social pathologies such as drug-addiction, juvenile anomie, and those derived from increasing old age- thus providing the main references for a new reform -already necessary- which ought to be based on personal health progress and not just on financial and private investment considerations.