We began the day by heading to the city hall in Buenos Aires where we met with Daniel Ferrante, the Director of the Buenos Aires City Ministry of Health. In his discussion he spoke a lot on the public sector of Argentine healthcare. It was very unique to hear his perspective on healthcare because we just heard from the Director of the National Ministry of Health yesterday who dealt with a completely separate set of problems and had a different view. One of the biggest issues with Buenos Aires public sector is fragmentation and the usage of the public system by people who have private care. This puts a lot of stress on the system because there is no way to prepare for the unexpected demand. Mr. Ferranti said that budgeting for the city of Buenos Aires is impossible because of this widespread usage of the public system even when people have other options.

Our second lecture of the day was given by David Leberstein, the head of the largest union in Argentina. Unions are another method through which Argentinians can receive healthcare. During his lecture, he discussed many of the problems that unions are currently facing. One of the most pressing issues is self-employed people who do not pay taxes (monotributos) that can choose to join any union they want and receive full healthcare coverage for $13. Normal union members have to pay 9% of their salary for their benefits which is around $30 for the average union member. So, a huge problem facing David’s union and others is that 25% of its members are monotributos and are only paying $13 which does not cover the cost of healthcare coverage which is putting more strain on unions and potentially forcing them to go bankrupt. Unions play a huge role in the social safety net of Argentina as private and unionized healthcare covers over 70% of the Argentinian population. Another major benefit of the unions that David discussed is the ability for family members to join the union their family member is in for only $13 too which provides care to even more people which is another major benefit to the safety net of Argentina. However, unions are becoming overstretched because of the quantity of care they need to give to a lot of members that are not covering their costs.

Finally, we finished the day with a tour of the city. We visited the Plaza de Mayo, Santomo, and La Boca. It was really cool to visit these three areas because they gave us unique aspects of the city. Plaza de Mayo was the city center where we saw the Pink House which is where President Milei works on a daily basis. In Santomo we visited a market that was interesting to get a sense of the culture of Argentina and see many leather and jewelry shops. Finally, in La Boca the buildings were painted with many colors, there was a cool river, and a lot of Boca Juniors merchandise everywhere because it is one of the most popular soccer teams in the country.