Capítulo IX. Disposiciones generales

The following benefits are granted to the Institute:

a). Exemption from all kinds of taxes, fees and contributions, fiscal or municipal, direct or indirect, established or to be established, that may weigh on its movable or immovable property, income or revenues of any kind;

b). Exemption from all kinds of duties, fees, taxes, contributions and surcharges that weigh or may come to weigh on the articles that it imports, provided that they are destined exclusively to the organization, installation or functioning of its offices, or to be able to supply, improve the quality of or lower the cost of the respective services in benefit of its insured persons.

This total import franchise must be subject to the procedures established by the laws of the Republic and the Institute is obliged not to make use of it when it can obtain national products under equal conditions to the foreign ones;

c). The same exemption as that provided for in subsection a), including the stamped paper and stamp taxes; it governs the juridical acts, contracts or businesses that the Institute executes or enters into, only in the part in which the respective taxes, fees or contributions must be paid by the latter. Consequently, the private individuals who negotiate or contract with the Institute, especially if it concerns the placement of funds, must make those payments in the portion that corresponds to them;

d). Exemption from providing sureties and from making deposits in judicial matters;

e). Total non-attachability of its property, funds and revenues, except in the specific cases in which the Institute contractually waives, totally or in part, this non-attachability; and,

f). Postal franking from and to the Institute and telegraphic franking only in favor of the latter.

No person may allege acquired rights by reason of the modifications that the regulations introduce, in accordance with article 44, as to the modality and extent of the benefits, or as to the amount and methods of collection or calculation of the contributions assigned to cover them.

The institutions, offices, bodies, chiefs or public officials that issue provisions or decisions that refer to the application of this law or its regulations with respect to their subordinate personnel affiliated to the regime of the Institute, must send to the Management a transcription of them before putting them into force.

The Institute must coordinate its action with the public or private bodies that are dedicated to the economic, social and cultural improvement of the indigenous groups, with the purpose of tracing and putting into practice the integral indigenous policy that article 83 of the Constitution orders.

When those bodies belong to the State or are subsidized by the latter, they remain obliged to help the Institute, with the purpose of facilitating its labors.

The Institute and the Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance must constantly coordinate their labors, with the purpose of avoiding a duplication of efforts, economic burdens and services.

The said coordination must be subject to the following fundamental rules:

a). Common planning of the best manner of using, maintaining, administering and developing the medical and hospital resources of the country or of those that both entities may have available at a determined moment, in accordance with the needs and extent of the services of each one;

b). Common planning of the best manner of carrying out, without loss of time, in each zone of the country, the preventive and sanitary labors, which are the necessary antecedent for the correct application of the various classes of benefits, especially of the one relating to general diseases;

c). Sale, at cost, of the hospital services that the Institute needs for its insured persons, provided that the respective hospitals are not administered by the Institute and are property of the State; and,

d). Common planning of the best manner of gradually unifying the various classes of benefits of the Institute with all the other assistance and sanitary services of the State, in a single social security regime, in accordance with the principles of this law.

The Institute must support and stimulate, by the means that it deems convenient, the activities of private charity, endeavoring to channel them, in harmonious form with the purposes of social security, toward a broader and better understood collective cooperation and solidarity.

The Institute must give constant preference to the labors of prevention and readaptation in matters of occupational risks and, in general, it must attend to and stimulate all those equal or analogous labors that contribute directly or indirectly to lowering the costs or increasing the standard of living and of health of its insured persons.

The Institute must cooperate with the Autonomous University of San Carlos, and the latter with the Institute, in order to trace and put into practice common plans for:

a). Widely disseminating the principles of collective cooperation and solidarity and procuring a greater social awareness of Guatemalan culture in harmony with the national reality;

b). Stimulating and developing the medical and sanitary sciences and the other branches of human knowledge directly related to the activities and purposes of the Institute; and,

c). Increasing the number and the scientific preparation of the professionals graduated or specialized in the disciplines alluded to in the preceding subsection, and developing the understanding of the social duties and rights that correspond to them.

The Ministry of Public Education, within the sphere of its powers, must lend its constant assistance to the Institute to better realize the purposes that subsection a) determines.

The Institute and the General Directorate of Statistics must coordinate their activities in order to:

a). Stimulate the development of statistics and of statistical awareness in Guatemala;

b). Facilitate the labors of one and the other, without incurring a duplication of efforts, expenses and services.

For this purpose, the General Directorate of Statistics must contemplate in its work plans the needs of the Institute that the latter cannot fulfill by itself and coordinate, in turn, the action of the other specialized statistical units of the State, with its own labors and with those of the Institute; and,

c). Facilitate the application of all the legal provisions in force on statistics.

To this end, both entities must watch that the data that are obtained on filiation or on the civil status of the parents are not individualized or personalized in any record or certification of a public character, nor be the matter of any disclosure, so that it is feasible to obtain general statistical data on those points without contravening article 76 of the Constitution.

The regulation must determine the form of requiring and obtaining the supply of the aforementioned data, in such a way that they serve only to fulfill the technical-statistical needs that the said entities may have of them.

The Executive Branch, through the Ministries of Finance and Public Credit, of Economy and Labor and of National Defense, by common agreement with the Institute and in accordance with the technical-actuarial studies that the latter carries out, must formulate and put into force a plan tending to coordinate the action of the welfare regimes that, for the benefit of the servants of the State, were created by Legislative Decrees number 1811 of April 30, 1932 and number 116 of March 22, 1945, and their amendments, with that of the social security regime.

For this purpose, the Executive Branch must issue regulations for the present article, subject to the following rules:

a). That plan may not contravene the principle of the national unity of the regime, to which articles 1 and 27 of this law refer;

b). The future servants of the State, appointed from the moment in which any of the classes of benefits provided by this law begins to be applied in part of the national territory, must contribute and receive benefits for and from the regime administered by the Institute; but if from the technical-actuarial studies it results feasible that the said servants, in whole or in part, continue belonging also, in temporary or permanent form, to any of the two welfare regimes already mentioned, that duality of contribution and of protection may be established, in optional or obligatory form for them, according to what the results of the said studies indicate;

c). The situation of the other servants of the State, not contemplated in the preceding subsection, who currently are not receiving benefits by virtue of Decrees numbers 1811 and 116, must be resolved with a criterion of social justice in accordance with the principles that inspire this law, insofar as it is compatible with the fiscal possibilities and taking into account that they today enjoy only simple expectations of right.

The technical-actuarial studies that are carried out for this purpose must give numerical and financial conclusions on the possibility of applying the rules of subsection b) to the case that the present subsection contemplates; and if that is feasible and if the inclusion of the said servants, in part or in whole, within the social security regime is decided, they may not in the future withdraw from it;

d). The acquired rights of those who are receiving benefits by virtue of the application of Decrees numbers 1811 and 116 must be respected;

e). As the case may be, the contributive possibilities of the State must be taken into account and the changes conducive to giving them a technical basis and financial stability must be introduced in the regimes created by the aforementioned Decrees, during the period in which they remain totally or partially in force.

f). It is understood that the current servants of the State who do not contribute for the two aforementioned welfare regimes, nor receive protection from them, for not being included in the provisions of Decrees numbers 1811 and 116, for some other reason, must enter the social security regime as soon as it begins to be applied; and,

g). The others that the aforementioned regulation indicates.

The medical, assistance or hospital benefits that the military or other servants of the State currently enjoy must be coordinated with the activities of the Institute, so that the latter may contribute to standardizing or improving the respective benefits.

In accordance with article 137, subsection 20, of the Constitution, the President of the Republic is only empowered to grant, insofar as the respective benefits have an additional character to those that the social security regime grants:

a). Pensions and survivors' benefits, subject to Legislative Decree number 192, of November 19, 1945; and,

b). Pensions, life or otherwise, to the citizens who have rendered eminent and extraordinary services to the country, which may only be granted in reasoned form and in cases of true exception.

What the regulatory plan of article 67 provides is saved, on the manner in which the two existing welfare regimes for the services of the State may continue in force.

The welfare regimes without profit motive, put into force by private enterprises or associations prior to the date of issuance of the present law, must coordinate their activities with those of the Institute and the latter, after the corresponding studies in each case, must issue the regulation or regulations that may apply, on the following bases:

a). In no case may the principle of the national unity of the regime to which articles 1 and 27 of this law refer be infringed;

b). The said private regimes may continue in force provided that their benefits have an additional character to those that the social security regime supplies. To this end, the Institute must strive that this occurs to the extent that the contributive possibilities of those who defray the cost of the respective benefits allow;

c). The contributors of the aforementioned private welfare regimes remain obliged to continue maintaining them at least in their current structure and situation, during the time in which the Institute does not authorize them to suppress them, in whole or in part, whether because their unprofitability is demonstrated, because the class or classes of benefits alluded to in article 28 that are equivalent or that are called to substitute the benefits that are to be suppressed are applied to the group or groups protected by them, or for some other reason qualified in the judgment of the Board of Directors;

d). The Institute must stimulate the creation, maintenance and development, under its control and supervigilance, of all kinds of medical, surgical, therapeutic or hospital services that the said regimes may grant, provided that the number and quality of those benefits, as well as their cost for the respective insured persons, fulfill at least the requirements that the said Institute determines in each case; and,

e). The others that the aforementioned regulations indicate, according to the circumstances proper to each regime.

The Institute must promote the creation and development of social welfare regimes whose benefits have an additional character to those that the social security regime grants.

No enterprise or private association or body or institution of the State, of whatever class that it may be, may put into force one or several social welfare plans or regimes, without express authorization of the Institute, which, after study of the corresponding regulations or statutes, is empowered to grant it during all the time in which the functioning of the said regimes is subject, under its supervigilance, to the rules that the preceding article contains, insofar as, in the judgment of the Institute, they are applicable according to the merits of each case.

The Institute and the private insurance companies, property of the State or of private individuals, must coordinate their activities in such a way that there is a reciprocal and constant aid and stimulus, as well as a delimitation of the sphere of action of the former and of the latter.

The said policy of cooperation must be traced on the following bases:

a). The "simple optional insurances", individual or collective, must fall within the orbit of the social security regime.

Simple optional insurances are those contracted voluntarily between the Institute and a person or group of persons who, for economic circumstances or another reason, are not obliged at a determined moment to submit to the social security regime, while the latter does not include the whole population of the country.

The respective contract or contracts must be limited to giving the person or group of persons in question the same benefits that are granted to the obligatory insured persons who are protected by the social security regime at that moment;

b). The "additional optional insurances", individual or collective, must fall within the orbit of private insurance.

Additional optional insurances are those contracted voluntarily between a private insurance company and a person or group of persons who, belonging in fact or potentially to the social security regime, wish to obtain greater benefits than those of a minimum character that it gives, through the payment of the respective additional contribution.

If the person or persons in question are protected by the social security regime at the moment in which the corresponding contract or contracts are signed, these must be limited to granting benefits additional to those that the said regime gives, without that implying that the said insured persons cease to contribute for or cease to receive the benefits that the Institute supplies.

If the person or persons in question are not protected by the social security regime at the moment in which the corresponding contract or contracts are signed, these may contain whatever stipulations are desired, without that implying that the said insured persons cease to comply in due time with their obligation to contribute to the support of the said regime, nor that they lose their right to receive the benefits that the Institute grants; and,

a). The others that the regulations determine.

The regulations must define the terms whose meaning is necessary to specify for the effective application of this law.

Every provision that is issued in contradiction with what this law or its regulations provide is null ipso jure, by virtue of the public order character of one and the other.

The benefits and rights that this law or its regulations grant may not be waived.