The Minister of Health of the Nation, Mario Russo, the Secretary General of the Presidency, Karina Milei, and the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Martín Menem, presented this Monday a new system of health “vouchers” called Municipal Medical Insurance.
It was in the Buenos Aires town of San Nicolás, together with the mayor, Santiago Passagliae, in the facilities of the new “GO Sanatorio San Nicolás” (from the Oroño Group), the first public-private health center in the country in which the system.
San Nicolás is the first place in Argentina to implement this system, through which medical coverage will be provided to 50,000 residents who do not have social work or prepaid medicine, which represents 30% of the local population.
Health Minister
Russo highlighted: “We understand the State as an efficient, agile State, and this experience summarizes what our view is from the Ministry of Health of the Nation.”
In that sense, he referred to the redefinition of competencies and pointed out that “our responsibility as a Nation is fundamentally stewardship, to set quality standards and protocols in the treatment guides,” and added that “the provinces have to become responsibility, as the Constitution says, and the municipalities must work in coordination with the provinces and the Nation.”
In addition, the minister announced that next month they will launch the Digital Prescription, from which the Nation will be able to find out the burden of diseases throughout the country, the traceability of medicines, and generate a database. “We firmly believe in this synergy between the public and the private,” the minister concluded.
Municipal Medical Insurance
Municipal Medical Insurance is implemented through a digital credential, using the user’s DNI as a member number, which allows control of care to avoid fraud. The digital credential works with token, like all social works, from the municipality’s website.
Through this system, the municipality is responsible for paying only for those medical benefits that the neighbor receives and that correspond to primary health care, the level that corresponds to this level of government. Demand is subsidized and not supply.
According to the National Ministry of Health, other clinics and private offices in San Nicolás that want to join the voucher system will soon join.
