Today was a bit more lowkey than the past visits has been, with us walking over to Austral’s downtown campus to listen to some lectures. Our first lecture was about the distribution of healthcare payers in Argentina and how the distribution affects other payers and premiums as well as the extra cost it adds to some of the private insurance companies/hospitals. Our second lecture was about a nonprofit group that goes to remote areas of Argentina in the northern provinces to provide healthcare to indigenous groups that don’t have access to public or private healthcare. The lecture itself was very inspiring, especially when we were shown pictures of people they treated before and after.

In regards to the prepaid insurance companies versus the union paying companies, the biggest difference is how they are being paid by the users. In the obras sociales system, employees and employers pay into the insurance and both contribute a portion of their income to the insurance, whereas the prepagas system is through private insurance companies that are not part of the unions, therefore the user is the one paying into it rather than the employer. This changed, however, in 2025 with a law passed by Javier Milei that allowed employees to choose between using the union obras insurance or using a private one and the employer must pay into whichever system the employee chooses, taking away some of the power from the unions by eliminating the amount of people that were on the union insurance and/or a private insurance depending on the person. This also allows for a freer insurance market that must compete with one another in the benefits they offer while also keeping their premiums low.