2023-08-30 02:20:00
Scenery
This “little help” from the Government is a shot at the feet of the population.
Everyone was and continues to give their opinion on the bonuses that the Government announced for retirees and plan beneficiaries and the fixed sum for private workers. In general, opinions have been adverse. The beneficiaries because they consider them insufficient. Employers because they consider them an arbitrary interference in the labor relations of private companies.
Where there were not many opinions was in the suspension of prepaid fees. It must be because people take this announcement as positive considering that prepaid fees are being adjusted every month. It wouldn’t hurt to give your pocket a break in the part of private medical coverage.
The issue is that This “little help” from the Government to the population is a shot at the feet of the population.
Let’s see why.
Think for a moment about your home insurance or your car insurance. The Government comes and freezes the price you pay for these two insurances. What is going to happen is that your house and your car continue to rise in value -due to inflation- while the protection that the insurance gives you is frozen -due to the freezing of the insurance price-.
So, your house is set on fire with the car inside. The insurance company will pay you a lower percentage of the value of the house and the car than what you had agreed to when you bought the insurance. You will have to pay the percentage not covered, due to the fee freeze, with your own money.
Prepaid is health insurance. The difference with home and auto insurance is that the prepaid does not give you the money when you get sick. What it does is give you a booklet with medical providers where you choose, go, take care of yourself and the prepay then pays the doctor (that you chose) their fees and tariffs to the health centers.
If the Government freezes the price of the prepaid, the prepaid freezes the fees of doctors and fees of private health centers. This implies that when you go for care, the doctor and the health center will tell you to pay, out of pocket, the part that the prepaid does not pay (because the fee is frozen).
Strictly speaking, it does not say it this way (“pay what the prepaid does not pay”). It says it with a “no turn” or with a “you have to pay a co-payment”. They are subtle ways, but the essence is the same: pay out of pocket what you don’t pay the frozen fee. The shot at the feet of the ad.
To this, the population is already suffering. Here it is convenient to do a little history.
When the Covid appears in Europe, in March 2020, in Argentina people are locked up in their homes preventively. As an emergency measure, a temporary freezing of prepaid fees is provided. This resulted in a (transitory) freezing of medical fees and the fees of health centers. As the confinement was arranged well in advance, the transience of the freeze stretched throughout 2020.
In the first half of 2021, general inflation accelerated as people left their homes and the government -although it authorized some small increases- remained reticent that the prices of prepaid (and the doctors and health centers of its cards) will recover what was lost in real terms during 2020 and the first half of 2021.
Thus, in the second half of 2021 the prepaid fees depreciated -in real terms- between 25% and 30% compared to December 2019 (pre-Covid level). In the same percentage, the fees of doctors and the fees of private health centers were devalued.
Go prepare your wallet, if you want a doctor to attend you
During 2022 and so far in 2023, the prepaid fees (and private doctors and health centers) kept pace with inflation, but maintaining the loss of 25% – 30% accumulated in 2020 and 2021.
This is how the worst of all worlds came to be: due to galloping inflation, the prepaid fees have to be adjusted monthly; people are not being able to face these increases because everything goes up -not only the prepaid fee- every month; Doctors are poorly paid due to the delay in fees from 2020 and 2021 and, for this reason, they do not give a turn to whoever shows up with a prepaid card or they charge a copayment that was not agreed upon when people contracted the prepaid .
Thus, there is widespread dissatisfaction in private medicine. People who are dissatisfied because their prepays are increased every month and then have to pay a hefty co-payment to get care. Physicians are dissatisfied with their low fees since the co-payment -no matter how juicy it may seem to the patient- is not worth it. The other health workers (nurses, maids, stretcher-bearers, ambulance workers, patient reception secretaries) are dissatisfied with their salaries because clinics and sanatoriums cannot pay salaries in accordance with inflation, since they have 25% arrears – 30%
And the Big Announcement arrives: the total freezing of prepaid fees.
Go preparing your wallet, if you want a doctor to treat you (and don’t even think of stopping paying the prepaid, to compensate, because if you have something serious, you’re going to need it).
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