It’s day 10 in Buenos Aires! Today we went back to Sanatorio de los Arcos to talk to Marcela Travaglini, Medical Director of Mutual, then visited the ICBA-Cardiovascular Institute, lastly, we visited Museo de los Immigrantes.
Today we got to speak with Marcela Travaglini about mutualism. Mutualism is the idea that you share common interests/resources with someone. Mainly this is found in Western society from the working class, like steelworkers where people would agree to help each other if someone got hurt. This concept is being used for the non-profit, SanCor Salud. They are run by a decentralized board of 15 people elected from small local mutualities. Members pay a monthly fee and in return when needed the company will pay for your medical expenses. This is different than insurance companies that are profit-oriented and run by a centralized administration. There is an appeal to joining a mutuality over buying insurance. The first one is that it is cheaper. Instead of paying for expensive insurance you may not use often you can opt to use a cheaper option that basically does the same thing. Another reason is for the religious reason of solidarity. Here in Argentina, the majority of people are Catholic. Catholicism holds a high ideal of solidarity and helps thy neighbor. This can be achieved by using mutuality.
Next, we visited the ICBA-Cardiovascular Institute. It was a beautiful private facility for cardiovascular care. they are highly advance and have a strong administration behind them. They have a vision and mission statement which is the first we have seen from a private institute. They also have pillars they hope to achieve. They also base lots of their measurements off of The Cleveland Clinic in the United States. They even showed us a live heart procedure.
Lastly, we visited Museo de los Immigrantes. This is a museum of a hotel that would house immigrants coming to Buenos Aires to work or reunite with family. It was interesting to learn how immigration impacted the culture of Buenos Aires along with some influence it had on the language. The hotel housed 3,000 immigrants at once. The hotel was built to help control the spread of disease. They would sleep on cots made of leather to make it easier to clean. People would stay for about 6-7 days before they were allowed to leave, but if they came because they already had a job or family here they would stay for 1 night and would be free to enter the city. For those who had to stay longer, there was a beautiful courtyard for them to stroll around and enjoy the fresh air, along with a hospital and immigration office. They were provided breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and would eat in 3 shifts of 1,000 people. Everything was free because it was cheaper for the city to house the immigrants than to treat the spread of disease.
That’s it for today. It was a busy day, but was really interesting. Tomorrow is another busy day of lectures and another museum visit. I’ll check back in tomorrow on how it goes.