The government announced its decision to establish limits for fee increases. It implies a significant reduction in the increases that members pay up to this month.
The brake will also be on increases for health professionals, sources in the sector confirmed. They assure that the consequence will be that more and more co-payments will have to be paid. The shift towards “individual only” care will deepen, they say. The decision is a step back in market freedom in private medicine, the government said in a statement. The announcement was made in response to complaints from doctors that their salaries did not grow to the scale of what the prepaid and social works increased to the members; now they speak of a 'brake' on increases. The official decision was announced by the presidential spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, and he specified on Wednesday that "by order of the Ministry of Economy, a group of private medicine companies, which represents almost 75% of the affiliates, are going to increase their fees." These increases accompanied what supplies cost today (the great complaint of prepaid medicine), but they did not coincide with the increases in professional fees," Jorge Coronel, COMRA president, tells La Nación. "Some prepaid companies raised their fees by up to 40% since December," says Coronel. The Argentine Health Union (UAS), on the other hand, assures this newspaper that it is not only recovering the medical salary but even since January "the payment time is being shortened," Coronel says. The brake on "tailored" increases, which was a resolution of the Ministry of Commerce based on an opinion from the National Commission for the Defense of Competition (CNDC), will also have an impact on the updating of the medical fees.