Study Guide: New Social Security Law

Chapter II: Concept of Social Security and Other Terminological Precisions

SOCIAL PROTECTION:
- Definition: The set of public or private actions aimed at protecting the population in
general and workers and their families in particular, against contingencies or
disasters that come from unforeseen situations.1
- Definition : The set of initiatives and regulations of the State, mainly of a legal
nature, created and directed to temper or reduce insecurity as well as the ills
suffered by workers, seen as an economically weak social class, inside or outside of
work. 2
- Social Security is then contracted to the forms through which, through the use of
present resources, a future interest is guaranteed.3
SOCIAL SECURITY:
- Definition: It is the part of mandatory social security that, under the administration
or supervision of the State, tends to prevent or compensate workers for the
distribution or reduction of their earning capacity, as a result of the realization of
natural and social risks. to which they are exposed. Social security began as one of
the institutions of labor law and is dividing the central organization of social
security: its purpose is to ensure the working man maximum security in his
existence and the guarantee of a decent standard of living.4
- Definition : Social Security is the instrument of workers' law, by which a public
institution is obliged, through a fee or premium paid by employers, workers and the
State, or only one of these, to deliver to the insured or beneficiaries, which They
must be economically weak elements, a pension or subsidy, when some of the
professional risks or social accidents occur.5
- Article 4. Social Security is the basic instrument of social security, established as a
national public service in the terms of this Law, without prejudice to the systems
instituted by other laws.6
Basic historical elements of Social Security:
1) The insured must belong to economically weak classes.
2) The fees or contributions that form the funds or technical reserves to cover cash
benefits are formed by the contributions of employers, insured persons and the
State, where applicable, depending on the type or branch of insurance.
3) It is administered or provided by the State through a public institution in charge of
providing such public service.
4) The Insured or their beneficiaries, having the right to pensions or subsidies and
other benefits in money and in kind established by law, may claim and demand their

1
Mexican Legal Dictionary
2
New Social Security Law. Angel Guillermo Ruiz Moreno
3
According to Mario de la Cueva
4
Mario of the Cave
5
Gustavo Arce Cano
6
Social Security Law
 payment or granting; It is not at the discretion of the decentralized public body to
cover or provide them, since it is not a free concession.
5) Social insurance operates under statistics and mathematical-actuarial studies
designed under the principle of calculating the probabilities of a risk or event
predetermined by law occurring, so the determination of the amount of
contributions payable by all obligated subjects, according to the specific case; They
are not left to the whim of the institution in charge of social security, but are
predetermined so that the essential financial balance exists and the public service
provider is not decapitalized, putting its existence or functioning at risk.
- Definition : The maturation of the social and ideological conditions that emerged in
the 60s of the last century (19th)... finds its most conscious political crystallization
in the work of Chancellor Bismark in Germany, a country that had recently
achieved its national unity and its bourgeois revolution, It will soon be placed in the
first row of the European capitalist states. And as an essential part of this “welfare”
policy, Bismark promoted the creation of a series of social insurance, illness, work
accidents, disability-old age, and survival, all of them collected in a so-called
“Social Insurance Code.”7
What did these social insurances consist of?
- It was a new legal technique for predicting social risks that is also a maturation of
previously existing strong ideas; that of solidarity of workers' mutualism and the
principle of corporate responsibility for work accidents, to which another
fundamental one is now added: the need for State intervention. From the sum of
these elements, social insurance will emerge with the notes of mandatory nature,
tripartite financing, public management and collective beneficiaries of people.
Another definition of Social Security:
- Social insurance is the instrument of social security by which it seeks to guarantee,
through solidarity, the efforts of the State and the economically active population,
avoiding or reducing the social and life risks and contingencies to which the
population is exposed and those to which They depend on it to obtain the greatest
social, biological, economic and cultural well-being possible in an order of social
justice and human dignity.8
Evolution from Social Security to Social Security:
- The evolution that has been experienced in this field has operated in a double
aspect: on the one hand, the border that separates public assistance from social
security and this from social security has been increasingly delineated, and on the
other hand, have specified the fundamental concepts that underpin social security.
In the first case, it has been specified that the central object of attention of public
assistance is constituted by those congenitally incapable of work and those who,
without being so, reject it, while the central object of attention of social security is
represented by the people subject to an employment relationship and social security

7
Manuel R. Alarcón Caracuel and Santiago González Ortega.
8
Eduardo Carrasco Ruiz
 by the general population, regardless of whether or not they are subject to an
employment relationship.9

Modification of Social Security trends over time.

- “On the other hand, an attempt has been made to outline and specify some
fundamental legal concepts; Thus, if in principle the actions of social insurance
revolved around the concept of “risk”, understood as any possible, future, harmful
and uncertain event; Later, in order to cover new situations, “social burdens” were
claimed, understood as any event that causes a need susceptible to economic
compensation. Finally, at present, social insurance seeks to protect the person from
the so-called “social contingencies”, understood as any event determining an
individual need, protected by a system based on social solidarity due to its political
and social projects. .10
SOCIAL SECURITY
- Definition: Social security encompasses a package adopted by society in order to
guarantee its members, through an appropriate organization, sufficient protection
against certain risks to which they are exposed.
Difference between Social Security and Social Security
- Social security uses the same methods as social insurance, but its field of action is
much broader. Illness, accident, disability, old age, death continue to deserve your
vigilant attention. But your life is and should be first and foremost health, work, joy,
cultivation of intelligence, coexistence and love. And social security strives to bring,
to the extent possible, all of this in each home.
For this reason, without neglecting the sick, it tries, first of all, to prevent the
disease: rather than founding orphanages, hospitals and nursing homes, it tends to
give the parents themselves the means to raise their children, within the home, by
sending to him, cleanliness, hygiene, abundance...11
a) Social security is actually an end, and social insurance is only one of the means to
achieve it.
b) In social security the directly benefited subject is the worker while social security
benefits are provided to people who are not united by an employment relationship
and even the employers themselves, natural persons.
c) In social security, the right to obtain benefits by the insured derives from the
circumstance that the obligated subjects cover fees provided for by law.
Another definition of Social Security:
- It is an autonomous discipline of social law, where the efforts of the State,
individuals and States among themselves are integrated, in order to organize their
actions for the full satisfaction of needs and the achievement of greater
comprehensive social well-being and happiness of each other, in an order of social
justice and human dignity.12
9
Ernesto Javier Patiño Camarena
10
Op. Cit.
11
José González Gales, Social Security.
12
Francisco González Díaz
Purpose:
- Article 2. Social security has purpose guarantee the right to health, medical
assistance, protection of means of subsistence and social services necessary for
individual and collective well-being, as well as the granting of a pension that, where
appropriate and subject to compliance with legal requirements, will be guaranteed
by the State.13
Another definition of Social Security:
- Integrated set of public measures for the organization of a solidarity system for the
prevention and remedy of personal risks through individualized and economically
evaluable benefits, adding the idea that such measures tend to be directed towards
the general protection of all residents against situations of need. , guaranteeing a
minimum level of income.14
a) It is about a set of public measures and that solidarity as the axis of the system is
embedded in them; It is true that it seeks to prevent and, where appropriate, remedy
protected social contingencies of an individual nature, but without forgetting the
community; and,
b) It refers to benefits in the health sector, measurable and therefore compensable in cash,
guaranteeing an income to the insured person in the event of a risk.

13
Social Security Law
14
Alonso Olea and Tortuero Plaza