Today we explored the relationship between the rural municipalities surrounding Buenos Aires and the city center. We started our morning by visiting La Matanza Hospital and doing a guided tour. La Matanza hospital had primary, secondary, and even tertiary levels of care. The facility was huge, with many corridors and rooms, and just about every specialty imaginable from pediatrics to OBGYN services to coronary services. The sheer size of this building was daunting, but the number of specialties available was not the only variable factor. The quality of the building and equipment itself varied from hallway to hallway, with some corridors looking clean while others had exposed wires, and some x-ray machinery being brand new while others were archaic. The main challenge of this hospital is the buildings rushed construction leaving it vulnerable to flooding and structural inconsistencies. They have 323 beds, and are upsizing 14 ICU beds to 20 in a new wing. Most of the ICU patients are there for similar issues to San Isidro like sepsis, respiratory problems, and trauma. However, the rural province in the greater Buenos Aires area is lower income, and has more violent crime bringing more victims of shootings and security risks to La Matanza’s ICU. La Matanza is funded by the provinces, posing multiple challenges they have to overcome daily with lack of funding. The areas surrounding Buenos Aires are populated by 3 million people, the same as the inner city. However, outside the city the barriers to access grow exponentially. Even though the populations are the same, the more rural areas are not covered equitably. This is contributed to by the history of Argentina, where under Perón relations between the urban and rural were buffered by the obras sociales and the rural areas were supported with workers comp, social security, summer camps, and social welfare initiatives. However, under Milei in 2025 the relationship between the private sector and obras sociales became adversarial. Milei handed over the choice of whether to fund obras sociales or buy private insurance to the individuals, which functionally creates competition between the two and a net loss of unity. Private insurers also operate on an uneven playing field. This contributed to the rift between Buenos Aires and its surrounding areas, leaving the inner city saturated with countless options for quality and affordable care while the areas just outside and beyond struggle to treat the volume of residents. In the greater Buenos Aires provinces there is no opportunity for tertiary care, research or clinical trials, or even preventative care. The hospital is a major powerhouse of healthcare and tries its best to deal with the volume of patients, however this is done out of necessity for survival and stretching resources thin. Equity for the areas surrounding Buenos Aires is critical to ensuring quality facilities and healthcare services for all Argentinean citizens, not just those in a concentrated metropolitan area.