Jorge López faced an overwhelming debt of nearly ¢200 million due to the cost of cancer treatments for his four-year-old daughter, who tragically lost her battle with the illness. Fortunately, a week after her passing, the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS) arranged a debt settlement to help ease his financial burden.
Now insured and up-to-date with his payments, López is set to pay a total of ¢300,000 over the course of 40 months, as per the agreement. His financial troubles began when he left Costa Rica for five years. Previously registered as an independent worker paying into the CCSS, he was charged ¢1.6 million upon his return for not maintaining payments while abroad.
The cancer diagnosis of López’s youngest daughter led to a series of treatments, including surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and palliative care, causing his debt to soar to ¢172.3 million. Due to his delinquent payments, he could not receive treatment for his own diabetes and had to resort to self-medication and using friends’ medications.
When López met with CCSS representatives, he was treated kindly and only required to provide some paperwork. A week later, he received a message confirming the settlement of his debt.
The CCSS encourages independent workers and employers who have defaulted on payments to apply for forgiveness of surcharges, fines, and interest. A new law, passed at the end of 2022, authorizes the forgiveness of social charges for those in default. Currently, there are 126,000 independent workers and 16,373 employers in default, but only 5,956 applications for debt forgiveness have been submitted.
