Being disabled in Argentina
By Maria Veronica Reina Romero (mariaromerous@yahoo.com)
(This article first appeared in Disability Tribune - March 2002. Disability Tribune is a regular periodical of Disability Awareness in Action, www.daa.org.uk)
In December of 2001 Ana María Martinez, 36 years old, and her daughter Violeta, 8 years old, both disabled people, were surrounded by the police at the ex-provincial and privatized BERSA Bank of Concordia, in the Province of Entre Rios, Argentina.
The woman had wanted to cash a check from the provincial health insurance agency for government employees. This check was a monthly special subsidy for anticonvulsive drugs for Violeta, who has severe cerebral palsy.
At that time, Minister of Economy Cavallo had ordered an economic restriction named after the corralito (little courtyard), that did not allow people to take money out of their own bank accounts and complicated official check cashing. The corralito led to a crisis that ended in the resignations of Cavallo and President De La Rua.
When Ana Maria tried to cash the check, a bank employee explained to her that she needed an extra document of authorization from that agency. Tired of bureaucracy and urged by her daughter's necessity, Ana Maria insisted on talking with the bank manager. After one hour he came, refused to pay the check and, seeing that Ana Maria would not move, called the guards. Then Ana Maria took the Argentine Constitution, which is always in her bag, and started to read the 14th article about human rights, doing it loudly due to her deafness.
When a policewoman reacted, trying to push Violeta in her wheelchair away from the bank, many clients responded furiously claiming for justice for Violeta and also against the corralito.
So the disorder was uncontrollable and the manager, finally, paid the check. But not everybody is as "lucky" as Violeta in Argentina. Violeta has bad health insurance, but at least has some.
Her mother works and belongs to a state agency that concerns government workers. Disabled people that currently work, or have worked in the past, or with relatives who work or are retired, should get the benefits of health insurance. However, this is not a smooth path. Usually private or public health insurance agencies don't recognize all disabled people's needs and don't offer many services for them.
After Acts of Parliament numbers 23660 and 23661 were passed, some disabled people brought their cases to Court, and the result was that the concerned agencies gave them services like rehabilitation, orthopedic devices, special dental care, etc. Furthermore, few disabled Argentineans have a job.
In addition, there are other Argentine disabled people who are even less protected: those who never could work and/or their relatives are currently unemployed.
In the 1990's, they could receive benefits from PAMI, the national health insurance agency for retired workers, but in the past year this benefit was canceled for anyone newly enrolled. In any case, a disabled person might first get the national pension for disabled people (a special disability pension for those who are unemployed and do not have working relatives), going through a process that can take years and after that he or she could receive benefits from PAMI.
Nowadays, PAMI is broke [without any money] and does not accept new enrollments from unemployed disabled people. These disabled people are now assisted by public hospitals that also are broke because of the modernization policy that shrank the state. In Argentina, public services, including health care and education, have been drastically reduced and the number of people living below the poverty line has increased during the last ten years.
Actually, each part of the health care system is failing. Every day people lose their jobs and, therefore, more people are without health insurance: 300,000 have lost their jobs this past January. On the other hand, the salaries are decreased dramatically, resulting in smaller contributions for supporting public health agencies, most of them related to workers' unions. They are not paying for services in private hospitals and other health enterprises. At the present time, many private hospital consortiums and pharmacies have decided not to give credit to the public health agencies and PAMI because they are not settling their debts.
No job, no health for disabled Argentineans.
But having a job does not guarantee health care. It does not even guarantee accessible transportation, buildings or education. Another benefit, a special tax that was created to help provide these kinds of services in the 1990's, is not respected today. The tax is collected, but is used to pay the interest of the Argentine external public debt.
Are disabled Argentineans overcome by a kind of Apocalypse? Maybe they aren't. The crisis is deep, but disabled people are participating a bit more every day. They go to popular assemblies and run diverse NGOs. They write letters, send emails and claim to the Government. Also, they participate in piquetes-blockades of the highways and main streets by poor people as a protest, they can last from a few hours to several days-like Ana Maria, and join themselves with other sectors: people of middle class, people affected by the corralito, and small business owners that each Friday make a protest with their pans at Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires.
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