A regulatory vacuum in the health market in Argentina was regulated this Thursday and it was established that the users of these services are consumers from now on.
Consumer Defense changed the parameters that governed, until now, the link between the service providers or health benefits and its users and established that both parties maintain a consumer relationship.
So the new Provision 47/2023 of the Directorate of Consumer Defense and Arbitration, published this Thursday in the Official Gazette, establishes that the providers of health services or benefits of any nature, public or private, such as social works, prepaid medical companies, mutuals, associations and cooperativesamong others, whether or not they are Agents of the National Health Insurance System, constitute a ‘consumer relationship’ in the terms of the National Constitution and the Civil and Commercial Code of the Nation, with its users.
Consequently, the competence of the National Directorate for Consumer Defense and Consumer Arbitration and its dependencies is established in the processes that either of the two parties initiate (consumers and healthcare providers).
The goal of the rule: resolve old dispute
The rule comes to put an end to an old tug of war between the Legal Affairs Management of the Superintendency of National Health Services and Consumer Defensesince, on several occasions, the first mentioned body had warned the second that, in the face of various presentations and claims by obras sociales and prepaid medical entities that are under the control and supervision power of the Superintendency, Consumer Defense does not is competent to intervene and/or penalize social works or Prepaid Medicine Entities.
Likewise, as established in the foundations of the aforementioned resolution, none of the powers and functions that the decree of creation assigns to the Superintendence of Health Services, nor those held by the organizations whose structure and functions it absorbed, have the mission of protecting the rights of users of the health service in consumer relations.
Consequently, it is resolved move forward in this direction to clarify the issue and define roles of action and competences in cases of conflicts between users of health services and those who provide them.
Source: Ambito
