Today we had a tango lesson at an IES location, toured the National University of La Matanza and the Paroissien Hospital. Both the University and Hospital were public, meaning they are owned by the government. The cost of University is free for students and Hospital is cheap healthcare for the 2,000,000 people it cares after. While it only had 303 beds, it is able to accommodate a lot of people with a wide range of problems, even a section focused on mental health, which is the only one of its kind in the province of Buenos Aires.
Federalism is the division of power between the federal government and its individual states/provinces, which is further broken down into counties and city governments. In Argentina, healthcare is provided by all levels of government, meaning that a province can own and run a hospital, just like a private company of federal government can. This makes it easier for rich neighborhoods to have higher quality hospitals, due to the high tax money from individual municipalities. For places like the Paroissien Hospital, funds aren’t really an issue, as they aren’t given a strict budget like the federal government would. However, this creates a huge gap between healthcare between rich and poorer communities. In poorer communities, the local governments don’t have enough funds to provide their people with good healthcare, so they rely on the municipality they reside for access to hospitals. Since the municipality has a lot of territory to manage, they cannot provide high quality hospitals and clinics. Places like San Isidro, the hospital we visited on day 3, don’t get enough funding, as the municipality has to budget in order to afford keeping other places open.
Funding is a massive difference between San Isidro and the Paroissien Hospital, allowing the Paroissien Hospital to have skilled doctors and more registered nurses. Paroissien Hospital is huge, while San Isidro has only the bare necessities to accommodate their patients. With more funding, hospitals are able to care for more people, replace infrastructure and get better technology.
