The news that the prepaid company Servin Life SA requested bankruptcy in court set off the alarm in the Government. In recent days, as far as he could tell Clarionat the Superintendency of Health Services (SSS) were investigating the case and finally reached a conclusion that complicates so much to the enterprise like to the Kirchnerist management. “Servin Life was a troubling company,” official sources said.
“It was not registered with the Superintendency as a prepaid medicine company, which meant it was in a situation completely irregular“, assured the sources, who confirmed that in that office there are more than 600 companies registered. In addition, they said that there could be more prepaid employees in functions with the same irregular situation.
This last fact is also supported by the explanation they gave to Clarion from the prepaid itself. His representatives admitted that the company was not registered in the SSS and gave their arguments: “In 2019 Servin Life received a provisional procedure number and then they suspended the granting of new registrations. The Superintendency was always a disaster. Nobody gave an answer. It was all online and they didn’t answer your emails.”
It must be taken into account that the Covid pandemic began at the beginning of 2020, but the representatives of this prepaid company assured that “after the pandemic everything remained the same. And when the Government changed, there was no attempt to regularize the situation because they were already doing something else, in full bankruptcy.” They admitted that “in theory the prepaid company should not have operated without being registered, but in the Superintendency they didn’t attend to you”.
Servin Life was originally a provider of home confinement services and since 2019 It also began to function as a prepaid company – that year the election of authorities appears in the Official Gazette – by absorbing part of the client portfolio of another prepaid company, Valmed. At its peak it had – according to the company – about 2,800 members. SSS sources told Clarion that “a internal summary to find out why Servin Life has been operating for years without being registered.”
“The situation of this company is a clear evidence of what happened in the Superintendency of Health Services in recent years: no one controlled anything and that is why companies like this existed,” added the sources who are now investigating these irregularities. Affiliates began to find out last Friday by email about the prepaid closure.
There are many prepaid girls in Argentina. How to know if health coverage It is solid and reliable? From the Argentine Health Union (UAS) they told this medium that after the Servin Life crisis they sent for reports on the financial situation of all prepaid companies in the countrygiven the concern that a “contagion effect” could occur.
In the SSS, meanwhile, they assured that “this management began a process so that the organization return to its main function, which is to supervise the agents of the health system. That is why they are being carried out audits and information is being requested that was not requested before: balance sheets, contracts with social works and providers, and records are being verified.”
What will happen to Servin Life affiliates
Beyond being a company that – according to all sources agree – has been operating under irregular conditions – a fact that its members were most likely unaware of -, Clarion asked official government spokespersons What will be the fate of the affiliates? that were already informed by the prepaid company about its closure.
The question refers to whether the DNU 70 In its article 267, it repealed paragraph m) of article 5 of Law No. 26,682, which ordered the enforcement authority to “transfer in bankruptcyclosure or cessation of activities of the subjects included in article 1 of this law, health coverage with their affiliates to other providers registered in the Registry that have a similar type of health coverage and fee.
The Government’s response today, faced with the real possibility of closing a prepaid company, has not been modified with respect to the letter of the decree: “All this is done with the objective of guaranteeing the free competition between the different market players and the freedom of choice of the beneficiaries,” they noted.
When Clarion He wanted to know because of the difficulty they would have, especially older adults and people with preexisting conditions to be voluntarily accepted into another prepaid plan, the sources said that “the health system also has social works and public health as options.” In addition, they admitted that having removed from the prepaid companies the obligation to receive affiliates from another company that closes it was a claim from the same companies.
Given that response, this medium consulted Hugo Magonza, president of the UAS (which brings together prepaid companies and providers), about what would be the solution for the people who stay without signal for the closing of a prepaid. “The basic solution is the combination of coverage, for which people have already paid or continue to pay. The possibility of complementary health plans, which integrate public coverage, social security, including PAMI and the provincial and special social works created by law.
Magonza added that “in this way, with a plan tailored to what people can pay and completing the high cost with the public system or PAMI, among others, no one would be left without coverage. If a plan is established based on the primary care and good practice protocols, without including social disability (which takes up 80 percent of the social works fund) even geriatrics (which should never have been part of medical coverage) and high-priced treatments, costs would not only go down dramatically, but they would not rise at the current speed.”
