Today we talked with Dr. Florencia Ledesma, about the difference between in Medife, a private insurance company, and ASE, an Obra Social. The private and union system in the new system designed by Milei are inherently the same. Each offer similar packages dealing with healthcare and both negotiate directly with hospitals. Essentially, both Medlife and ASE act as private insurance, meaning that survival of both is possible but unlikely. Since they both do the same thing, unions will essentially be phased out over a long period of time, with bigger unions being the last to fall. Losing unions may benefit the consumer because it removes a middle man from the equation. Originally, a union may have negotiated with a private insurance company to cover their members, however, allowing people to skip this intermediary step may prove detrimental to unions.
We also visited the ICBA private cardiovascular hospital in Buenos Aires. It was an extremely nice facility, clearly a very rich hospital. ICBA is a privately run hospital by physicians for over 40 years. Swiss Medical, a large private insurance company, bought the hospital in 2023, however, all operations and planning has remained control of the ICBA executives. We toured the facilities dealing with heart failure, acute blood vessels, and general visits. Despite the severity of the cases in the hospital, there is very quick turnaround, with patients only being in this hospital for 6 to 8 hours. With this speedy system and great results, the hospital is very efficient.
Unlike public hospitals, this place is very well funded, allowing them to pay their doctors generously, attracting a workforce of nurses that are highly educated. While it makes sense for doctors to go for higher paying jobs, it is sad that this is how their system works. Because of budgeting, provinces must allocate their funds across multiple hospitals, meaning that each individual public hospital could never be as nice as a place like ICBA. Lower funding makes it not only harder to procure qualified staff but also to obtain top of the line equipment. The difference between private and public hospital’s sanitation is also observable, displaying that public hospitals have to cut corners to keep the doors open.
