The debts of the intervened EPSs now total $16.8 billion pesos: How can this crisis be explained?

The current financial situation of the intervened EPSs is alarming : they currently have a capital deficit equivalent to 98.3 percent of the total deficit of all the country's insurance companies combined.

The intervened entities alone reported a total of $10.03 trillion pesos in equity deficits by the end of the first quarter of 2025, while this same financial indicator for all EPSs in the country was $10.2 trillion pesos.

This is reflected in the most recent "Financial and Portfolio Analysis of EPSs" conducted by the Así Vamos en Salud observatory, based on information submitted by these entities to the Superintendency of Health (Supersalud) and the Ministry of Health.

What's most worrying about these results is not only that the deficit is higher in the intervened EPSs, but that it has been growing over the past three years, and compared to the same period in 2024, the negative figures have skyrocketed.

Thus, while the intervened EPSs accumulated the aforementioned deficit of 10.03 trillion pesos in the first quarter of 2025, for the same period in 2024 it was 5.7 trillion pesos, for the first quarter of 2023 it was 3.3 trillion pesos, and in 2022 it was 1.3 trillion.

According to the analysis, "the progressive deterioration of the assets of the nine intervened entities is evident. Between 2022 and 2023, they increased by 140 percent. Similarly, in the last year (between the first quarter of 2024 and 2025), the variation was 74.5 percent."

This is mainly explained by a significant drop in the assets of these entities, which for the analyzed period of 2022 totaled 12.1 trillion pesos, but today are barely 6.7 trillion pesos.

On the other hand, liabilities, which had been decreasing or remaining stable, grew significantly in the last year, reaching negative figures of 16.8 trillion pesos by March 2025, while by the same date in 2024 they stood at 12 trillion.

In the words of Augusto Galán, former Minister of Health and director of Así Vamos en Salud , this situation is fundamentally due to the fact that the Government has “deliberately” restricted adequate funding for the system: “The Ministry has disregarded the orders of the Constitutional Court regarding the UPC and has complied with the maximum budget in dribs and drabs until December 2024. This year, both factors of financing the system are underfunded.”

However, according to the observatory, the actual financial results of the intervened insurers could be much worse, since financial information has not been available since 2022 for Nueva EPS, the country's largest entity, which has been under intervention since April 2024.

According to former minister Galán, the effects of this underfunding, which the report warns about, are already being seen. " The worst consequences are already being suffered by users and patients who have seen their treatment delayed or stopped, which has already been reflected in a significant increase in lawsuits and PQRS (Related Injuries). Patients are reporting a true humanitarian crisis. Of course, there is a lack of liquidity in the system, affecting clinics, hospitals, healthcare workers, logistics operators, and suppliers of medicines and devices," states the director of Así Vamos en Salud.

Among the report's most notable findings is that of all the EPSs with a negative balance, five were intervened during the current administration, and of these, all saw their equity deficits increase in the last year, in some cases alarmingly.

This is the case of EPS Sanitas , which has been under intervention since April 2024 (i.e., by the cut-off date of the report, it had already completed twelve months under this measure). This entity went from having positive equity of 21 billion pesos to negative equity of 1.1 trillion pesos, representing a total change of 5,702 percent.

"This abrupt change reflects a critical situation that seriously compromises its financial sustainability," the report explains.

A similar case is that of Coosalud , which has been under intervention since November 2024. Although this EPS was under intervention for five of the twelve months during the period studied, it is still striking that in one year it lost 1.3 trillion pesos, going from a positive equity of 228 billion pesos to a negative one of 1.08 trillion.

The particular case of Famisanar is also alarming, registering the largest equity deficit in the entire system, with a negative balance of 2.4 trillion pesos, a 56 percent increase compared to the 1.5 trillion deficit it recorded a year ago.

It's worth remembering that Famisanar has been under intervention since September 2023, and that its deficit for that year totaled 1.1 trillion pesos, meaning it has increased by 1.3 trillion pesos over the past two years.

For its part, Savia Salud , the first EPS that was intervened in the current four-year period (in June 2023), its negative equity went from being 0.5 trillion pesos that year, to 0.7 trillion for 2024 and 1.17 for the same period in 2025.

Among the EPSs that were intervened before the current government took office, the most worrying case is Emssanar . Its negative equity as of the first quarter of the year is 1.7 trillion pesos, the second highest of all entities.

MATEO CHACÓN ORDUZ | Deputy Editor, Today's Life