PS I know public health care can be a lot worse further from the capital but it's Buenos Aires we are interested in right now.
i realize that most of those following this thread are interested in knowing most about private health care in Capital Federal, but, at least in my experience, public health care out here in Buenos Aires has been superior, even to the prepagas I had in Capital from 2006-2010.
Here's one example:
At one point during the pandemic, in late 2020, I thought I detected a mass when poking my abdomen while I was in bed one Sunday evening. I had recently lost a lot of weight "without really trying" and I was somewhat concerned. I sent a note expressing my concerns to a Facebook friend who is also a surgeon in Punta.Alta.
He replied in less than an hour and told me to meet him at the public hospital before 8 am on Tuesday morning. He had.surgery scheduled for 8 o'clock. We entered an exam room and he gently probed my abdomen as I explained how I had been on a KETO "diet plan" for several months and only realized the "extent" of my weight loss on Sunday night when I discovered that a pair of jeans that I had not tried on for several months now fit like clown pants
He told me that he didn't feel anything unusual in my abdomen but he wanted me to have an MRI in Bahía Blanca and to wait for the head nurse to call the hospital there to make the turno for Thursday. I was not alarmed until she handed me the order for the MRI on which the doctor had written the word URGENTE in caps and circled it muliple times. That added a bit of tension into my life for the kext eight days.
The following Wednesday I received (picked up) the results of the MRI and sent a photo of the report to the doctor via whatsapp. I received his congratulations and reassurances within the hour.
I know that nothing l8ke this would be likely to happen in Capital to any expat, including me. The doctor and I are friends on Facebook, but I have only seen him once outside the hospital in the ten years since we first met, and that was when he was getting into his car which was parked near mine in the street behind the hospitaI.
I hope my story has been entertaining. Telling it was the best way I could think of to demonstrate how good the public system can be and how much the heath care professionals here genuinely care. Of course the doctor works in other locations, including his.own consultorio, but I only know.him through our encounters at the public hospital, the first being a subcutaneous infectíon which was in the middle of.my back. It began with an emergency room visit followed by two minor surgeries, both of which he performed.
