Health Services Superintendent Ricardo Bellagio yesterday defended the government’s decision to increase by 30 percent the funds for the unions’ healthcare schemes, which was criticized by the opposition.
Bellagio confirmed the measure, which was announced by local newspapers, and said the increase of the healthcare schemes funds “did not have any relation” with the conflicts between different unions. He promised there will be strict audits” on the use of the resources.

The official said critics who suggested the funds will be used to favour pro-government unions are making a “political reading” of a measure, and that it “exclusively aims to improve the quality of attention the patients receive.”
He said the teamsters’ union, headed by the son of pro-government union leader Hugo Moyano, the boss of the CGT general labour confederation, “will be one of the unions that receives less money.”
UCR Radical party head Gerardo Morales asked the government to stop using “funds that don’t belong to them.”
“We have to control what the healthcare schemes do with these funds so that the health system works efficiently, that it reaches all workers,” Morales said in a communiqué.

Former health minister Graciela Ocaña said the measure “is a way to take resources, a very important form of corruption.”
She said the funds will be included “in the patrimony of some union leaders,” and that the measure would benefit Moyano.
Herald staff with agencies