The Law Today

The Sanna Law

06 Abr 2018

Introduction

Law 21,063 was published in the Official Gazette on December 30, 2017.  It created insurance for Caretakers of Children, also known as the “Sanna Law.” This insurance will provide coverage for working parents of children suffering from a serious health condition.

Nature of the Benefit

This insurance is mandatory so that working parents of children suffering a serious health condition can be justifiably absent from their job for a certain period of time to care for them and receive a subsidy in that period that substitutes in whole or in part for their salary.

Insurance Beneficiaries

The beneficiaries under the insurance are working parents of a child suffering from a serious health condition, as provided in article 7 of Law 21,062 (see point 6).

Insurance Funding

Law 21,010 establishes a payment of 0.03% of workers’ taxable salary, payable by the employer, which will be used to create a fund to finance the insurance.

This payment will be gradually implemented in the following percentages during the periods indicated below:

– 0.01% from April 1 to December 31, 2017.
– 0.015% from January 1 to December 31, 2018.
– 0.02% from January 1 to December 31, 2019.
– 0.03% as from January 1, 2020.

The requirements to be an insurance beneficiary

The requirements for working parents to be insurance beneficiaries are that the parent have a child older than one year and younger than fifteen or eighteen years, depending on the situation, who is suffering from a serious health condition.  Working parents of ill children who are given custody by courts may also be beneficiaries.

Insurance requirements

The Law requires the following:

– Affiliation to the insurance program.

– Being employed on the date when medical leave begins and having made at least eight monthly health insurance payments, whether or not consecutively, in the last 24 months prior to the medical leave start date.  The last three payments closest to the start of the leave must be consecutive.

– Being issued medical leave by the minor’s attending physician that certifies that the child is suffering from one of the serious health conditions that grant the right to this benefit.

– There are also specific requirements depending on the pathology or health condition being cited.

Contingencies covered by insurance

Under article 7 of Law 21,063, the following will be considered to be serious health conditions:

– Cancer in children older than one year and younger than eighteen years of age.

– An organ or hematopoietic stem cell transplant in children older than one year and younger than eighteen years of age.

– End-of-life stage in children older than one year and younger than eighteen years of age.

– A serious accident where there is a risk of death or of a serious and permanent functional disability in children older than one year and younger than fifteen years of age.

The coverage for each of these illnesses will be gradual. Full coverage will begin December 1, 2020.

Medical Leave

Medical leave will be issued to the parent by the child’s attending physician and it must certify that the child is suffering from one of the serious health conditions stipulated in the law.

This medical leave will be given for periods limited to 15 days, unless the leave is granted for half-days.  Medical leave can be extended for the same period of time, both consecutively and non-consecutively.  However, the sum of the days in each leave cannot exceed the periods indicated above.

Medical leave may only be granted for a serious accident where there is a risk of death or a serious or permanent functional disability as of the eleventh day after the accident.

Use of leave

The regulations establish limits depending on the type of illness or disease:

– For cases of cancer, leave will be limited to 90 days in a period of 12 months starting from the start of the first medical leave.

– For organ or hematopoietic stem cell transplants, the duration will be for 90 days as from the start of the first medical leave.

– For children near the end of their life, leave will be until the child dies.

– Leave for each parent due to a serious accident will be limited to 45 days per child as from the start from the first medical leave.

If both parents are entitled to this insurance, they can make use of the leave jointly or separately, at their discretion.

Leave may be for half-days whenever the attending physician prescribes care of the minor for that period of time.  The calculation of the duration of leave will be made considering half-day medical leave to be equal to half a day.

The provisions in the third paragraph of article 161 of the Labor Code will apply during leave, meaning workers cannot be severed because of company needs or at the employer’s discretion, notified in writing.

If both parents are entitled to this insurance coverage, either may transfer all of the leave available to the other for the cases described in article 7, letters a) and b).

If both parents are entitled to the insurance coverage and one has been given custody by the court, that parent will have right to all of the leave corresponding to both parents.

Other changes made by the law

Law 21,063 also made changes to article 199-bis of the Labor Code to add the principles of co-parental responsibility and to change the age ranges for which leave is available.

Effective Date

This law entered into effect on December 30, 2017, the date when it was published in the Official Gazette, notwithstanding any special rules contained in the law.

Contact Us

Should you require further information on the subject, please contact Claudia Godoy at cgodoy@jdf.cl or Alfred Sherman at asherman@jdf.cl

JDF