With Milei, a possible privatization of the health service would extend to the acquisition of medications that the organization currently offers free of charge. What prices would the basic supplies against diabetes, hypertension and heart disease have, according to a private study.
The possibility that the candidate of La Libertad Avanza, Javier Milei, win the elections forces us to rethink the eventual impact of his proposals to quantify the cost of those services that today are provided by the State for free. In that sense, according to the Observatory of Medicines as Social Good, A PAMI retiree could spend up to $116,000 per month in remedies.
“A polymedicated retiree can only afford the treatments if he or she has the option of not paying for them.” The reflection comes from Patricia Rivadulla, director of the Observatory, and is faced with the possibility of decentralizing control of the PAMI to refer it to the provinces, as Milei proposes. “We have to make it more efficient because there is a lot of theft. Everything the State touches rots. Competition mechanisms must be created for it to work better,” said the libertarian candidate.
Currently, PAMI regulates the medicine market through a differentiated price that allows it to deliver many of them free of charge.. It maintains the Vademecum, a list of free essential remedies that includes more than 3,700 presentations per commercial brand for the treatment of the most common pathologies in older people. Retirees and pensioners over 60 years of age affiliated with PAMI can access it. Currently, the largest social insurance company in Latin America guarantees this medication plan to more than 5 million members, who starting next year could be visibly harmed by the tariff for the service.
“In the majority of chronic pathologies, the PAMI patient does not pay anything,” they explain from the ATE-CTA Autonomous entity. That reality could be modified by market logic. According to the list provided by the entity, A retiree could spend $115,598.97 per month, considering the main medications to treat hypertension, heart disease and diabetes, typical pathologies suffered by older adults. The list is composed as follows:
- Losacor 50×30 (active ingredient Losartan) – sale price $7,403.9
- Carvedil 50×30 (active ingredient Carvedilol) – sale price $8,894.07
- DBI 1 gr x60 (active ingredient Metformin) – sale price $10,072
- Humalog 100 x 5 (active ingredient Insulin) – sale price $86,213
In addition, Rivadulla clarifies that if the drug Seretide Diskus is added, applied for patients with COPD, with a sales price of $33,280, the monthly budget for a PAMI retiree would approach $150,000. “The problem has to do with the drug price increases, which are exponential. Only in the last week from 15 to 20%, with the probability that after the national election we will have another increase of the same value,” he explains. That is, in a single month, medications would increase by almost 40%.
According to PAMI data, currently four out of ten affiliated people receive all their medications for free. At the same time, nine out of ten receive at least one free medication. At the same time, they warn that, If a member had to pay for their medical visits, they would spend approximately $34,000 per month. The privatized health model would also involve paying for medical procedures such as dialysis, which would cost $190,000, or a tomography, which costs $45,000 each, or $55,000 each time a retiree needs an MRI. At the national level, there are 14 million people who only have coverage from the State because they do not have prepaid or social insurance. Without their intervention, and in the economic context in which a retiree must already function, the consequence on the pocket could be very harmful.
Source: Ambito
