From Few to Many: Ten Years of Health Insurance Expansion in Colombia

In the 1990s the nation of Colombia introduced mandatory health insurance, with the goals of improving access to care and protecting the population from impoverishing and inefficient spending as well as the hardships of illness and care-seeking. Financed through a combination of payroll contributions and general taxation, this comprehensive plan included a contributory regime for those able to pay and a fully subsidized regime for the extremely poor. F rom Few to Many presents the results and lessons drawn from a decade of reform implementation. The authors examine changes in the financing and delivery of health care; the impact of insurance on financial protection, equity, access, and utilization of care; and the regulatory framework accompanying reform.