Today we visited our final two hospitals. The first hospital– a public sector hospital, Hospital General de Agudos Dr. Fernández is located in Buenos Aires. The second hospital we visited is Swiss Medical in Buenos Aires as well. This is a very top notch private hospital with a high class building and interior design, opposed to the public hospital. Looking at these differences between hospitals shows us that there is a social gradient in Argentina and it makes us think about how it compares to the gradient within the United States.
The similarities of both of these countries’ social gradients consist of how the higher class you are the more opportunity for health care you can receive. People with lower income and socioeconomic status have worse health outcomes like higher rates of disease and mental illness. Another similarity is that despite different healthcare systems, both of the countries show inequities in getting access to quality healthcare services across socioeconomic groups.
The differences is the US is more based around private hospitals, insurance based systems which the access is mostly tied with employment. Argentina, on the other hand is a mix of public and private and unions. Another, is that in the US a lot of the population are uninsured especially lower socioeconomic status people, which is not a problem mostly within Argentina because basically everyone in the country has access to the public health system.
Jacob Wizov
