Provincial health funds distribution in the Gran Buenos Aires: thoughts about local policy (2000-2005)

Abstract

In recent decades the health sector in the province of Buenos Aires has suffered an acute process of decentralization of services towards municipalities. This process was not accompanied by the definition of a benefit model establishing the level to be guaranteed in every smaller territorial unit. This work focuses on the impact that funds distribution criteria in "health" -from the provincial state to municipalities- have had in local policy. The objective of this study is to understand how this distribution encourages, restricts and organizes local health policy, generating a fragmentation that creates different conditions for exercising the right to Health in each local area. As part of a collective project, the study seeks to reconstruct the 24 municipalities of Gran Buenos Aires macro conditions of local policy in order to detect the existence of "typical patterns" during the crisis of 2001, which will help to explain the perspective of local strategies.