San Nicolás health vouchers are launched, a laboratory for the total privatization of medicine

In the San Nicolás district they inaugurated the implementation of a health voucher system and the inauguration of the clinic in which this mechanism will begin to be applied. Karina Milei and Mayor Santiago Passaglia (close to Patricia Bullrich) participated in the inauguration. Regarding the program, they detailed that the health voucher will be allocated to more than 50 thousand neighbors without social work with the intention of decompressing the collapsed public health system.

They will be given a credential and the commune will specifically cover medical benefits related to primary health care. If a higher level of care is required, the patient will be referred directly to a public hospital, thus creating “mixed” care.

To clarify the motivations of the local government, it is worth remembering that the predecessor and brother of the current mayor, Manuel Passaglia, was one of those who tried to disaffiliate the municipal employees of the Ioma district, a social work of public workers in the province of Buenos Aires, for the benefit of the Avalian prepaid company that did not even have local infrastructure but does business with the ruling clan of San Nicolás. If it did not succeed, it was because the Passaglias encountered opposition from the workers, who especially denounced the risk that the measure meant for 300 families with patients with chronic conditions; a fight for which the Municipal Workers Union (STM), Rodolfo Cecchi, was fired, who later had to be reinstated by a court ruling.

The government, which has been adjusting the public health system for 6 months (the cut is already around 40% of the budget), uses its deterioration to apply subsidies to private sanatoriums, commanded by the main health capitalists, in this case the Oroño Group, the same one that owns OSDE. Among the most criminal cuts is the one applied to disability, which resulted in protests by the sector, the dismantling of areas to prevent dengue, the freezing of programs that provide free medicines (including oncology), the cut in allocations for surgeries for children with congenital heart diseases and the countless complaints due to lack of supplies and basic elements, as is the case of the Fiorito Hospital. In this sense, protests and strikes by workers proliferate, as was the case in Misiones, Bahía Blanca, Río Negro, Santa Cruz, Córdoba or even Garrahan itself, and the strike by the Health union.

Now, with winter, the flu outbreak greatly increased the demand for public hospitals. In places such as the British Hospital, the Pedro de Elizalde, the Ricardo Gutiérrez or in sanatoriums such as La Trinidad, guards can be seen in high demand and families having to wait hours to be treated. This state of affairs is replicated in other establishments, such as those in the suburbs. Pediatricians denounce that the adjustment promotes the collapse of the health system.

In parallel, in a country where sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise, the Ministry of Human Capital, which contains the Ministry of Health, promotes the Conin Foundation, headed by Abel Albino, a reference for the most rancid conservatism of the Opus Dei that extorts the beneficiaries of the food delivery to do “Health Workshops”, which promote the non-use of prophylactic methods.

In turn, the government has paved the way for prepaid companies to advance social works by reversing the withholding of 20% in the contributions of affiliate fees for the financing of the Solidarity Redistribution Fund (FSR), in addition to authorizing the release of rates from the month of July. With this modification, prepaid companies will pay the same as social works, despite being able to set prices and fees higher than those of workers’ social coverage, this being another differential to favor the private sector against union organizations.

Milei favors the prepaid medicine “cartels” by providing them with a market of millions of registered workers. This would break the solidarity nature of the system and expand social differentiation regarding access to health, with social works emptied and on the verge of collapse and prepaid services with great benefits.

While private companies amass fortunes, thousands of families find their access to health care increasingly restricted. We must end the privatization policy of health and big business for a handful of capitalists, defeat the adjustment and achieve real budget increases to address the hospital crisis. The way is organization and struggle in the streets.