Salta retiree faces inhumane charges and exposes abuses at the local Medical Center

By Jesus Vargas

In Salto, the discomfort with Salto Medical Center It's not new. Every week stories emerge that expose the same reality: the local health system seems to have been transformed into a charging machine. Consultations, orders, medications, tickets and even simple administrative procedures are paid for as if health were a luxury and not a basic right.

Retired patients and families with tight incomes say that each visit to the doctor represents a direct hit to their pocketbooks. “You go in sick and you come out in debt,” summarizes a neighbor who accompanies his wife to chronic treatments. That phrase, repeated in the waiting room, paints the general feeling of a population that is trapped between the need to seek care and the economic impossibility of doing so.

The case that reignited indignation is that of a 77-year-old woman admitted to the Pan American sanatorium. She had undergone heart surgery and, shortly after, developed respiratory failure. Doctors indicated treatment with strong diuretics to avoid complications such as water in the lungs. However, when the professional on duty issued the order for the medication, what came next disconcerted the family: the drug had to be purchased externally, at a cost of 2,000 pesos every two weeks.

Her husband, retired with the minimum, walked to the Medical Center headquarters in the hope of resolving the issue. He wanted to explain that they could not afford this fixed expense, that every peso counted between medicines, electricity and food. But the only thing he managed to do was return the order with no alternative. “There is no protocol for those cases,” was the response, dry and bureaucratic.

What seems like an isolated episode is, for many, part of a pattern. Members and officials of the system itself admit, in a low voice, that the logic of the institution revolves around economic performance. Each procedure, each paper, each intervention has an added cost that multiplies with the fragility of the patient.

Meanwhile, the most humble population is left adrift. Older people who receive a minimum pension, single mothers who do odd jobs or informal workers end up having to choose between paying for the medicine or buying weed and milk. In a country where the discourse of universal health sounds good in the reports, daily practice shows another face: that of systematic profit disguised as medical care.

The situation opens a broader debate about the mutual model in Uruguay. Although mutual societies were born with a cooperative spirit, many became service companies that prioritize balance sheets over the well-being of members. Rates, co-payments and “tickets for everything” generate a climate of mistrust and frustration in users who feel that their monthly contribution does not guarantee them real coverage.

For now, the authorities of the Medical Center have not issued public statements about the case. Nor has the Ministry of Public Health intervened directly, although sources in the sector admit that claims for improper charges are repeated in several institutions in the interior.

Meanwhile, the patient remains hospitalized, her husband looks for alternatives and the people of Salto observe with resignation a system that, far from healing, is making itself sick due to bills.