Today, we had two lectures about the ministry of health of the city of Buenos Aires and about the obras sociales, which are workers unions in Argentina and are very important.  The first lecture was in Bueno Aires’ city hall where we heard from Daniel Ferrante about how the ministry of health functions at the local level in the city of Buenos Aires, as compared to what we learned about the national ministry yesterday.  For the second lecture, we were back at Universidad de Austral where we met with Gabriel Lebersztein, who is the leader of the commerce union, Argentina’s largest and most powerful workers union.  He was telling us a lot about the importance of unions in Argentina’s healthcare system and how most people get their health coverage from their union.  The unions charge $13.80 every month for membership, and workers can pay extra to include family members on their plan if they need coverage for any reason.  He was also talking about how many people in Argentina are informally employed, meaning they don’t pay taxes the same way that a contracted employer does, and they have to access unions in a different way than formally employed people do. Formally employed people donate 9% of their salary each month to the unions, which allows them to stay funded, whereas on the other hand, informally employed workers are able to take advantage of unions without paying in to them from their income.  This makes unions unsustainable because as more people discover this loop hole, unions can become underfunded and go bankrupt.  This is problematic because unions are very important to people and are special, especially in the context of Argentina where they have held so much power for so long and ensured workers rights.  If unions were to disappear, many more people would be forced to use the public healthcare system, which would put extra burden on an already overwhelmed system.  I found it very interesting how unions have such a big role in Argentina, which is very different from the US as unions in the US serve different purposes and function differently as well.  To end our day, we took a bus tour of Buenos Aires and visited Plaza de Mayo which is the center of government of Argentina, San Telmo, and La Boca. These neighborhoods are just some of the things that make Buenos Aires such a distinct city, as the many cultural influences on the city are very apparent.