Day 6 in Buenos Aires! Today we went to the Buenos Aires City Government building, where we met with Dr. Daniel Ferrante, who is the current Deputy Minister of Health at CABA. We learned about the public sector of health care in the city of Buenos Aires. In 2016, an integrated healthcare network was implemented, that included primary care, mental health, and made data easier to find. Buenos Aires city has nearly 5,000 total hospital beds in the public sector, which is 5x more than they really need. However, the government can not get rid of the excess hospitals, because it will appear like the government is getting too involved and being abusive of the healthcare system. After meeting with Dr. Ferrante, we went to the Univeridad Austral (Buenos Aires campus), where we had lecture with Dr. Gabriel Leverstein. Dr. Leverstein is the current director of the Obras Social de Comercio (retail workers), which is the largest union in Argentina. I thought this presentation was interesting since my project topic is about the Obras Sociales, which is the social health insurance program tied to formal employment. Each is managed by a specific labor union and funded through mandatory payroll contributions from workers and employers. They provide healthcare coverage to workers and their families. We learned about PMOs, which stands for Programa Médico Obligatorio (Mandatory Medical Program). PMO is a guaranteed minimum package of healthcare services that all Obras Sociales (social security health plans) and prepagas (private insurance plans) are legally required to provide to their beneficiaries. PMOs are good for the patients, but healthcare workers are negatively affected by the loss of money. We then had a lecture with Dr. Luis Gimenez, who was the past deputy national minister of health. He taught us about the public sector of health care, specifically the role the ministry of health has in it. We learned that the ministry of health supervises, oversees, regulates drugs, authorizes providers, and sorts what is considered into PMOs. The ministry of health has 3 axes: territory, coverage and information.
After the lectures, we went to Museo Etnografico (Museum of Ethnography), which focused on the scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences. We looked at many exhibits that showed artifacts ranging from 2000 years ago to 500 years ago. We looked at many pieces of pottery, masks, and costumes. This was very interesting learning about the history of the people that lived in and around Argentina many many years ago. The costumes for the traditional dance was my favorite part, with all of the small details and depictions on the silver. This dress was often worn for colonial celebrations like fireworks and bullfighting.
The most important topic we learned today was the PMOs. As I stated previously, PMO stands for Programa Médico Obligatorio (Mandatory Medical Program). PMO is a guaranteed minimum package of healthcare services that all Obras Sociales (social security health plans) and prepagas (private insurance plans) are legally required to provide to their beneficiaries. Despite PMO being a good program for patients, it causes many problems for the leaders of obras sociales. Politicians often use PMOs to gain favors. Each year, they pick a treatment that gets covered by the PMO, which this year is Ozempic. Insurance is required by the national government to make ozempic free. This makes prices skyrocket. There is no limit under requirements to qualify for PMO, while there is a cap from what you get from members. This combination causes the Obras sociales to run out of money. Obras sociales don’t usually have a lot of money, so resources and treatment are hard to get and this problem makes it is even harder. This affects both poor and rich Obras sociales, but hits the poor ones the hardest.
