Another problem arises here: As Ámbito learned, the chamber members were already trying to reach a consensus to carry out a Chamber Agreement in which they were going to define a homogeneous formula to respond to the thousands of judicial proposals that came to those courts. It was a topic of conversation since Monday.
Before the Government’s advance, that agreement between chamber members for a uniform criterion was still green, but the formula of the CPI per month could balance and order the disruption of individual files that concentrate accessions in different courts and lead, in some cases, to the Chamber itself via health protections. Another note: the official complaint for “collusion” by the CNDC and the sanction imposed with advance protection should have been sent to the Specialized Chamber for the Defense of Competition, created by law and whose judges already competed, but were never elected. The Government encouraged her to be discharged before what should have been her debut.
Almost the official arguments end up being traced to the precautionary ruling of the Federal Court No. 2 of Concepción del Uruguay that gave scope to the claim of affiliates and converted a decision to roll back dues into a collective one.
For companies, refunds are “unviable”
But companies analyze other arguments. They consider the refund to members as “unviable” as leaving on credit what was collected based on the formula proposed by the IPC Executive.. It would be the defunding of the system, they discussed on the frenetic Wednesday night. The first effect to avoid being defunded would be to have to cancel the increases to providers (doctors, studies, etc.), which could result in them abandoning the service and with the consequent drop in quality for members.
Prepaid companies have an argument at hand to justify their increases and defend themselves against accusations of cartelization. All the increase letters to affiliates from December to date – starting with the deregulation – mention that “as is public knowledge, the National Government has decreed through DNU 70/2023 of December 20, 2023 the health emergency in the country, thus making it possible to recompose the prices of the current plans and thereby cover cost gaps.” That is still valid, like the DNU.
But there are other equally complex issues underlying it. The Government (looking at the opinion polls) imposed the maximum weight of its decision on prepaid but does not mention another highly concentrated sector: laboratories. Along with the deregulation of prepaid medicine, there was a festival of updates for pharmaceutical companies, which now remain uncapped. One system is interrelated with the other. Discounts on medicines went from 17% to 35%, the pie of the direct spending of private medicine. This provision would not allow discounts.
The complaint, on the one hand, is that this point was not addressed and the business model of each prepaid company that can be on both sides of the counter (with a sanatorium structure) or can be a “financer” of providers. There the financial economic equation is essential. They confided to Ámbito that in 60 days there could be a mismatch that would cause the system to collapse. And although the measure falls on the companies that have the largest mass of affiliates, there are many companies that were left out of the regulatory umbrella. Another objection that may be discussed judicially, the lack of equality before the law that emerges from the government decision.
The Government faces its fiercest contradiction: on the one hand, it must defend the validity of the DNU – Javier Milei’s reform matrix that is still in place – but it is precisely the instrument that the companies claim made it possible for them to do what they did. that now the Executive censures them. Translated, they issue a resolution instead of modifying the DNU (because it would be lethal for its validity) and then present an amparo in which they ask to regulate something that they themselves can do.. Courts are no longer asked to define political disagreements, but rather delegate executive functions to them. Going back would be – in the face of society – something of very high political cost.
The Belocopitt factor
A pill. It must be the first case in which the Government discovers a cartelization stated out loud four months ago, from the mouth of Claudio Belocopitt himself, when, naturally, he announced that the main companies would meet to define the percentage of increase that the then brand new DNU, around 40%. Coincident or not, they all increased almost the same. The Government disdains that this turn is a response to the fact that it has looked at surveys in which the prepaid issue ranks at the top of the irritation of the punished middle class. Medical companies disbelieve that it is the true motivation. One of the largest, which has more than 2 million members, admits a net loss of 10 thousand members since the increases began, a tiny percentage.
Claudio Belocopitt.webp
Belocpitt owns Swiss Medical and 50% of Medicus, whose acquisition occurred in 2021 without much publicity and He has suddenly become the public enemy for the Government, but also for part of the Red Circle that secretly collaborates with his detractors. Old quarrels. The first consequence is that the rest of the members of the UAS used a low profile as a subterfuge to avoid being dragged into a war that, they say, does not belong to them. Some explain the virulence of the attack in alleged operations that the Government attributes to Belocopitt regarding the dengue crisis and even having, privately, set a deadline for the governability of Milei, an explanation for having fully accelerated with the increases, while it lasted. In essence, they believe that the mess between costs and fees began with the regulation of the Prepaid Law in 2011, during Kirchnerism. They affirm that the norm, in fact, “cartelized” them.
But the versions of the Government’s fury against Belocopitt sink into the most muddy and they do not deny having resorted to what they consider “fileable” material from the highest-profile businessman in the private health system. They talk about patrimonial issues abroad and even go so far as to revive an old case of incompatible negotiations linked to a business with the Western Railway Club. That is a Milei war that is recorded in another record.
