You climb in health
The health category was the one that rose the most in the last inflation data for June: 7.4%, against 5.3% the general level. After food, it was the item with the second highest incidence in the CPI data. In the accumulated figure for the year, health is also above the general level (37.5% versus 36.2%) and the same if you look at it year-on-year (67.2% versus 64%), according to the Indec. In any case, medicines are found within the health category, but there is also the prepaid category.
What is observed is that medicinal products and health equipment rose above inflation in June (7%), also in the accumulated index for the year (37.2%), but not in the interannual rate (62%, against 65%). On the other hand, prepaid expenses are well above medicines, and lead the increases in most categories: only in June, prepaid expenses rose 10%, and in the last year they did so by 88.4%. It is a regulated price, which in order for the increases to be enabled, must be authorized by the Governmentthrough the Superintendency of Health.
The other initiative, proposed by the industry and the pharmacies, will be a “Cared Patients”, which will establish that prescription drugs have a 35% discount for the population with public coverage. Of the total population, 31.1% only access the public system, while 68.7% have some social, prepaid, mutual or emergency service, according to INDEC. The population that only accesses the public system amounts to 39% for children up to 17 years of age.
The agreement between the Government, laboratories and pharmacies is reached after an acceleration in drug prices, from March to here. They rose 5.9% in both March and April, 4.1% in May, 7.2% in June and 5.1% so far in July, according to reports from the CEPA center. In fact, in the hours prior to the announcement that was made this Tuesday at Casa Rosada, the Argentine Health Union (UAS) released a report that assured that 60% of the most used medicines rose above inflation in May.
the future of food
Along the same lines, the Government will seek to reach a similar agreement with food and mass consumption products. “With other economic sectors we have been working with the same logic,” said Martín Pollera, the new Secretary of Internal Trade, during the announcement of the agreement with the pharmaceutical companies, at Casa Rosada. Pollera participated in the last meetings that were held with the cameras of the laboratories in recent weeks.
“As with Careful Prices, we guarantee that the trajectory of price increases will be below inflation”Pollera said. Care Prices, renewed last week, has the logic of going below inflation: the almost 1,000 products on the list will increase 9.3% in the July-September quarter. The next measure to be announced will be an agreement on the prices of dairy products, with increases of around 10%, according to Ámbito.
In addition, the official anticipated that in the coming days the meetings with the food companies and the large supermarket chains will continue. “It will be to ensure that the increases we have seen in recent weeks are not transferred to the shelves, because they are disproportionate and are not justified by the structure of costs, raw materials and supplies,” he said. In the first fortnight of July, inflation accelerated to 7.9%, according to the private survey of the Ecolatina consultancy.
On the other hand, Pollera anticipated that when breaches are noticed “automatically the State has to apply a fine, because it is a voluntary agreementwhere we all signed it, so non-compliance is expected to be penalized”.
Source: Ambito
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