Garrahan Hospital's budget increased in 2024, but has remained frozen since December.
The stark figures for budget execution confirm what Garrahan Hospital workers have been loudly denouncing in their ongoing salary dispute with the government: the hospital's funding has been frozen since December of last year. While it was assigned a 241% raise throughout 2024—as claimed by the Ministry of Health—the truth is that it has not received any reinforcements in these first five months of this year, which effectively means a drop in its budget in real terms due to inflation.
A similar situation is affecting the five national hospitals whose operations depend entirely on the state budget. These are the Posadas; Bonaparte; Ramón R. Carrillo; Baldomero Sommer; and the Dr. Tesone National Rehabilitation Institute . All of these hospitals have also had their budgets frozen since December 31st. The aggravating factor is that their funds are under-spent by between 25% and 35% , well below the 43% average expenditure rate for general spending at this point in the year.
On the other hand, Garrahan Hospital , whose budget depends 80% on transfers from the nation and the remaining 20% on the city government, has already spent 53% of its funds, which currently total $169.445 billion . At this rate, it will not have enough funds to make it to the end of the year . According to a report by economist Hernán Letcher , Garrahan Hospital's budget should have totaled $241.044 billion if it had been adjusted for inflation.
What's significant about this case is that the Ministry of Economy had planned more resources for the hospital this year; this is confirmed in the 2025 budget it sent to Congress but never approved . It included an allocation of $190.5 billion , a much smaller amount than what would have been adjusted for inflation, but at least it represented a 12.4% increase.
The question that arises, then, is why the Ministry of Economy hasn't disbursed a single peso to the hospital in these five months, when it had, in fact, planned to allocate more funds this year. This newspaper contacted spokespersons for the Ministry of Health, headed by Mario Lugones , but they explained that they were unable to provide a response by press time.
The 2025 budget was ultimately not approved in Congress by the ruling party, which closed the legislative debate at the end of the regular session. It was a deliberate political decision: on December 31, the government, in an unprecedented institutional act, extended the previous budget for the second consecutive time and froze the allocations of all ministries and their various programs . Its objective, similar to that of previous governments, was clear: to have greater discretion in the allocation of public resources through presidential decrees.
The political and social consequences of this decision to not have a budget law are clearly evident in the conflict with the workers at Garrahan Hospital . This conflict reached its peak with the work stoppage of its resident physicians, who are complaining of insufficient wages of $797,061 for work weeks exceeding 60 hours.
While the government announced that a salary increase for medical residents could be announced in the coming hours, it also warned that if the conflict continues, sanctions will be applied in accordance with the public employment system. This would entail deductions for days not worked and, after five unjustified absences, automatic dismissal. In the case of residents, repeated absences could lead to the loss or failure of residency, which would extend their professional training.
President Javier Milei fueled the tense atmosphere when he insisted the day before yesterday that the problem at Garrahan Hospital is the disproportionate number of administrative employees working there—which, he said, is taking resources away from the hospital—and blamed Kirchnerism for this situation.
"Garrahan has 953 administrative employees and only 478 full-time physicians. That's practically two administrative employees for every doctor," presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni had stated when the conflict broke out.
The government's data, however, does not correspond with the hospital's own official information . According to a report by the Chequeado website based on data from the 2024 statistical information yearbook, the hospital has 4,728 permanent employees, 68% of whom work in the care department, meaning they are in daily contact with patients. The administrative staff consists of 473 people, not the 953 reported by Adorni, Chequeado notes.
Not only is Garrahan Hospital facing budgetary difficulties; the five hospitals dependent on the national government have also had their funds frozen since last December and adjusted for inflation starting in 2023. This is detailed in the report by Hernán Letcher, director of the Argentine Center for Political Economy (CEPA), which indicates the degree of implementation of these funds as of May 25.
They are:
The critical budget situation of the nation's hospitals will be a topic of discussion next Tuesday at the Health Commission chaired by Pablo Yedlin (Unión por la Patria), and it is not out of the question that it will be brought to the floor the following day. In light of the conflict at Garrahan Hospital, the legislator introduced a bill to declare a pediatric health emergency nationwide.
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