The right to health in Colombia: Overcoming the social and institutional barriers to access health services

In this article we will argue that the Colombian Constitutional Court has made an important contribution to the elimination of legal/formal barriers to access to health services, but its limited focus on correcting regulatory failures under the health system model of Law 100 is insufficient to address the social and institutional barriers to access, which continue to be the cause of high litigation in health. To do so, we will start from the failures evidenced by the post-2008 litigation, based on the rulings of the Constitutional Court (especially the orders of compliance with Sentence T-760 of 2008), the reports of the Ministry of Health that refer to the compliance with these orders, the annual reports of the Ombudsman's Office and the specialized literature of recent years on the Colombian health system.