The Competition Defense Commission (CNDC) investigates whether there was an illicit agreement between prepaid medicine companies to set sales prices.
A source from the Ministry of Commerce confirmed that “There is an investigation underway”just one day after a post by the head of the Treasury, Luis Caputo, who had pointed out that “the prepaid companies are declaring war on the middle class.”
There he also assured that the Government would do what was necessary “to defend it.”
The prepaid medicine entities enrolled in the Cimara, Ademp and Cempra chambers and associations will ask Caputo for an audience in order to “bring him closer to all the information that is available and that explains – among other situations – the definancing to which he was subjected the sector for years.
In practice, the Government is now joining an initiative that opposition leaders presented at the beginning of the year.
On January 15, a group of legislators from the Civic Coalition led by Maximiliano Ferraro and Hernán Reyes, filed a complaint for “anticompetitive conduct” that supports the investigation. Almost three months later, it gained new momentum.
The source of the sector that has Claudio Belocopitt (owner of Swiss Medical and president of the Argentine Health Union) among its leaders confirmed that at the moment they have not been notified of a new instance.
“At the time the notifications were responded to, but we are not going to give details of what we presented,” they explained.
The Competition Defense Commission is an organization within the Ministry of Commerce that functions in a “deconcentrated” manner.
Its function is to guarantee “the quality of goods and services, at the lowest possible price.” In fact, it is the agency that is carrying out the investigation originated by the complaint that accuses “the main companies” that provide the prepaid medicine service of alleged “anti-competitive conduct.”
“In January we saw that the companies had had some meetings and when the increases were confirmed we denounced them for cartelization and asked that an analysis be done,” said Deputy Reyes.
It indicates that there were allegedly “meetings to coordinate the setting of an increase for users, which would have agreed on an estimated increase of around 40%.” This is one of the most sensitive files in the commission’s possession. It is under summary secrecy and a “firm resolution” is expected from the organization, according to official sources.
This is the first formal investigation against prepaid healthcare for alleged collusion that arises in public offices.
Until now, the setbacks against the companies had arisen from Justice, when different judges accepted precautionary measures from the affiliates to return prices to the situation before the increases.
At the end of last February, the Federal Civil, Commercial and Contentious Administrative Court of San Martín No. 2 decided to expand, in principle for a hundred people, the scope of a precautionary measure issued in mid-January, through the which a prepaid medicine entity was ordered to annul the fee increases applied or announced under the protection of the provisions of DNU 70.
The resolution is valid “until a final ruling is issued” on the issue.
The presidential spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, pointed out that there is “a cartelization that is beyond all reasonableness.”
And he warned: “We deregulate, we give freedoms, but we do not allow there to be a degree of cartelization that affects Argentines.”
Source: Ambito
