The governor of the province of Buenos Aires,
Axel Kicillof
, described this Tuesday as
"stupid"
the reasoning used by Jorge Macri, who announced that priority in Buenos Aires hospitals will be given to people who are residents of the City over those of the provinces.
"It doesn't make much logic
," he remarked.
"In a normal season we have 10 million tourists, many are from the Capital who go to Mar del Plata, Gesell, Pinamar, Mar de Ajó, who go to the mountains, the river or the lagoon. When did you listen to me? launching Operation Sol
saying that I'm going to ask for their address to see if I charge them or serve them
? It doesn't make much sense," said the Buenos Aires president in dialogue with Crónica TV.
The controversy broke out in the last few hours after the head of the City Government said that Buenos Aires residents will begin to be prioritized in public health care in cases that are not emergencies or life-threatening.
"Every day they go to work, they say, two or three million people from the Province go to the City and
with what they do they contribute gross income
. It seems to me that 3 million people of working age live in the City, yes We do the math, most of the taxes of the City of Buenos Aires are the product of the work of Buenos Aires residents who go there.
But look how stupid the reasoning is
," Kicillof added.
At the same time, he said that "all the people of Buenos Aires who go to the province of Buenos Aires or to spend the weekend in Pilar, Escobar, or who go to the Coast, should be calm," that they are not going to "let themselves be distracted or distracted in a such a complicated time with issues of this type.
But Jorge Macri was not the only focus of dispute that Kicillof took up, who also hit the national government for the country's economic situation: "We are observing that more and more those who previously could pay for a remedy privately or are going to hospitals. "They had a prepaid one."
"I said they came to privatize and in the end they are nationalizing, because the people who previously went to the private sector now end up in the public," he ironized.
What Jorge Macri said, which generated Kicillof's response
"We are designing diagnosis and care systems to prioritize the City's residents," Macri detailed this morning in a radio interview. As Clarín learned, it refers to a project that is being analyzed and of which many details are not yet known. It is barely known that there is an intention to create four intermediate care and diagnostic centers in which those who reside in the City will be treated first.
In addition to making public the initiative being worked on in the City, Macri criticized Axel Kicillof's government for "
the serious level of disinvestment and mismanagement that has occurred in public health at the provincial level
."
Although he acknowledged that "it is historic" that Buenos Aires patients are treated in medical centers in the Federal Capital, the head of the Buenos Aires Government remarked that "it is reaching its highest peak of complexity."
"We make a great effort,
but it has a limit
," he warned.
And he explained: "Our responsibility is also to try to prioritize the neighbor who supports the public system with taxes. Obviously not when there is a risk of life, because there is no speculation. People go out desperate to try to get what they can because in their They don't give it a place."
On this point, he highlighted that the vast majority of patients from the Province who come to be treated in the City "come from municipalities that do not have municipal health care, but rather provincial ones."
"We are going to continue making an effort because many Buenos Aires residents come to work every day in the City, they contribute, they work here, they have their businesses... The concept of community is broad, but we also need the Province to assume its responsibilities and give health in their place of origin," he demanded.
The position of the Ministry of Health of the Province
Almost at the same time that Kicillof responded to the controversy, the Buenos Aires Ministry of Health, headed by Nicolás Kreplak, issued a statement announcing the position taken by said Ministry of the Province regarding Jorge Macri's decision to prioritize the people of Buenos Aires in the city's public hospitals.
"The Ministry of Health of the province of Buenos Aires sees with deep discomfort the radio statements of the head of the Porteño Government, Jorge Macri, where he affirms that the City of Buenos Aires is going to prioritize medical care in hospitals in its jurisdiction to the neighbors and neighbors of the capital," he begins by saying.
There, he emphasizes that "health is one of the essential rights" in Argentina and that "its access must be unrestricted for all people who require it and where they require it."
It also warns that currently the City of Buenos Aires has more than 30 hospitals plus national hospitals in its territory for a population of around 3 million inhabitants, of which "80% have social work or prepaid medicine coverage , whose care is mainly in private clinics and sanatoriums, so
care in public health centers for people with exclusive public coverage would be for 600 thousand inhabitants
.
"More than 3 million Buenos Aires residents enter the capital daily to produce, work and study, generating wealth, a reference and a closeness of attention to such health providers, so this is also an unavoidable condition when analyzing behavior of the AMBA population with the health system," he adds.
And he reiterates that "
these statements" by the head of the Buenos Aires Government are surprising and distressing
"because the Province of Buenos Aires is working tirelessly for the articulation and integration of the health system."
"It is important to highlight that during the pandemic,
17% of the inhabitants of the Federal Capital were vaccinated in Buenos Aires territory
, without consulting place of residence or social stratum, demonstrating once again the deep conviction for the construction of a comprehensive and quality health system," he continues.
And he closes: "Also, what the Head of Government of the City of Buenos Aires shows today with selfishness and with an attitude of little solidarity, his concern with the more than 500 thousand people of the city who were treated in the Buenos Aires system in the Atlantic corridor so far this summer season in our province, added to the hundreds and thousands of people who do weekend tourism in the interior of our province and require attention and care.