For several years, and for various reasons, privately run clinics and sanatoriums in the interior of the province of Córdoba have been facing a profound crisis, which has a direct impact on the health care of a huge segment of the population, with the health risk that this implies.
It is not necessary to examine in depth the motivations of this situation to conclude that these are financial collapses that are impossible to bear. And almost always appear in the column of losses and needs the systematic arrears of the payments of some social works.
Interruptions of coverage due to non-payment of these institutions are common, among them Pami and Apross, to mention the most voluminous in number of affiliates.
In a report that we published a few days ago on this problem, the business sectors and the entities that group clinics and sanatoriums in the province agreed to paint a picture of skepticism: “The situation is terminal,” they claimed.
The comparative numbers are cause for concern: of the 405 private clinics that existed in the entire Cordovan territory in 2000, only 93 remain. the city of Cordoba.
This inequity of location has been hitting towns and villages in the interior for years, whose patients must make a pilgrimage of tiring kilometers to find a sanatorium that exceeds the logical limitations of municipal dispensaries.
It is opportune to reiterate that in some regions of the interior, the deficiencies are also observed in the modest presence of health professionals in different specialties, who choose to continue their career in the capital city. Another phenomenon not at all new and of obvious remunerative origin.
Now, the State should not remain impassive in the face of such a table of needs. Nothing less than in times of proliferation of bacterial and viral diseases that have stalked us since the coronavirus pandemic.
When crises harass people (not only in reference to the universal right of access to health services), state aid is inalienable.
In this context, it is a good sign that the Córdoba government is analyzing a package of measures aimed at mitigating the economic suffocation that is shaking private sanatoriums in the interior and condemning them to closure.
It is difficult to understand that localities of relevance in terms of the number of inhabitants do not have a health center of minimal complexity. “Not even to attend a birth,” graphed one of the professionals consulted for the aforementioned report.
By the way, the national administration is no stranger to the debacle. With 90 percent annual inflation, health costs have skyrocketed and are impossible to afford; in a special way, in terms of medicines and replacement of basic supplies.
The clinics warn that they are about to collapse, so it is time to help for the good of the thousands of patients who are left out in the open.