Organismos reguladores del sistema de salud colombiano: Conformación, funcionamiento y resposabilidades

Regulation is a way of intervention of the public sector, which uses its legitimate and coercive power to establish restrictions to agent’s activities who participate in the market and guarantee the efficient allocation of goods and services and social welfare. In Colombia, as an interesting international experience, the health care sector adopted a scheme of regulated competition in which three organisms with regulation functions participate; one of those is a committee of public choice and the other two are executive central branches. In this case, analyzing who, what and how is regulated, we find critical aspects trapped in the lack of long term strategic planning and some inherent elements to the committee structure which puts in doubt its autonomy and the search for social welfare in decision making. In this context, questions about how is the agent’s participation in the regulation can direct the taken measures, as well as issues that consider representativeness of the committee and the election mechanisms of their representatives.