Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the inside of the hospital [at the time it felt rude, but I really should have taken some!], so let me try to create a word-picture for you: The hospital is all concrete, very dim lighting (as opposed to the harsh bright lighting seen in the entrance here), dirty, cold. There are hundreds of people lined up waiting to be seen, many who wake up at 4 AM or before in order to arrive on time from the provinces. Some people are talking amongst themselves, most are just silently waiting, bundled against the cold.
The situation at first is very depressing, especially to someone accustomed to UHS (Harvard health care) or even higher quality private hospitals. But when you start talking to the people, the vast majority have nothing but praise for the Argentine hospital system, especially within the Capital Federal of Buenos Aires (as opposed to the provinces). They praise the quality of doctors, the ease of getting a same-day appointment, the patience of the staff. Most seem to feel incredibly lucky to be able to receive medical attention so quote-end-quote easily.
I was looking for unregistered workers, those who don't have an obra social to provide for their healthcare. Coming in, I naively assumed that anyone standing in a line for free healthcare would be lacking an obra social, thus be working in black. I thought it would be merely a task of separating domestic workers from all the other people there. I was surprised to discover however that many (if not most) of the domestic workers I talked to there are working in white and have their own healthcare provider. They chose to come to the public hospital instead because of the ability to see someone that very day, and to be able to come in the morning – the obra sociales seem to generally need appointments a week or more in advance, and the appointments are often in the afternoon, smack in the middle of the work day. A few people also mentioned the greater variety and quality of services offered at the hospital as a reason for going to the public hospital instead of to their obra social.
Given that workers routinely complain to me about the public hospitals and the long wait time to be seen, I have come to understand that obra sociales and public hospitals have their tradeoffs, depending on what you need to be seen for. If what you need is a routine check-up, or an ongoing medical treatment, it's really great to be working in white and have your obra social. If you're sick and need to be seen by a doctor, the public hospital is the better choice. Obviously for both, a private hospital would win hands down.
I am very glad that I went to the hospital, even though I didn't encounter as many unregistered workers as I was hoping to. First off, and entirely unrelated to my thesis, seeing what "free universal healthcare" in Argentina looks like was an eye-opener for me. I think I often envision my personal health care experience superimposed on another country when I picture universal health care systems, when that's just really not the case.
The fact that it was so hard to find unregistered workers even at a public hospital is an interesting fact in itself as well. I would like to take the scarcity of unregistered workers I found as proof that the majority of domestic workers these days are working in white (as many workers have in fact told me). But I have to take my "evidence" with a grain of salt – those who are most likely to be working in black are those who are least likely to be able to come to even a public hospital, be it for lack of money for transportation, the inability to miss work, a slave-like existence where they are unable to leave the house, or even perhaps lack of knowledge. Not to mention that some people may have been simply unwilling to admit to me that they were working in black (or more likely I think, to admit that they were a domestic worker at all if they were unregistered).
I am glad that I went to the hospital. I am even more glad that I don't have to go again. Although going back to sleep at 9 AM led to some really crazy and vivid dreams...
[On a side note, walking the streets of Buenos Aires at 6:30 in the morning was definitely the most un-safe I have felt here, much more so than at night (although I haven't been out walking much past midnight often). Buenos Aires must wake up late because there was next to no one out and even Starbucks wasn't open yet. Maybe I looked like I was coming back from a night out, because I got more cat-calls from drivers this morning than at any other point here!]
No comments:
Post a Comment