If the new disability bill promoted by the Minister of Health Mario Lugones If it became the norm, thousands of people with disabilities could lose essential coverage, therapeutic benefits and economic certainties that today support treatments, transfers, support and rehabilitation. The alarm is not only concentrated in the explicit cuts, but in a regulatory architecture that, according to family members, providers and organizations, dismantles acquired rights and makes uncertain what until now was mandatory. The most sensitive point, and perhaps the most profound, is the elimination of the national nomenclature: the tool that sets minimum and homogeneous values for benefits throughout the country.
Zero minute. The project entered Congress under the title “Against disability pension fraud”a name that has already generated rejection in the sector because it is considered to place those who receive disability benefits under general suspicion. But behind the name appears a more far-reaching reform. The initiative proposes to review registers, re-register beneficiaries, modify the financing of benefits and alter labor mechanisms linked to workers with disabilities. For specialized organizations, the “fraud” narrative functions as a prelude to a budget adjustment.
The cancellation of the nomenclator is the heart of the conflict. Today this system establishes reference rates for transporters, therapeutic companions, day centers, homes, special schools, rehabilitation, psychopedagogy, speech therapy, kinesiology and multiple services included in the coverage scheme. With its elimination, the values would be negotiated between social works, prepaid and providers. In theory, a deregulation; In practice, specialists warn, an unequal battle where the financier has greater power than the person providing the benefit and, above all, than the family that needs it.
What would happen then? First, a drop in income for thousands of professionals and institutions that already report tariff delays and delayed payments. Second, the closure of small therapeutic centers unable to sustain fixed costs. Third, a reduction in supply: fewer adapted transports, fewer vacancies in day centers, fewer companions available. And fourth, a brutal segmentation: whoever can pay differences will access; Those who don’t will be left on a waiting list or without treatment.
For families, the scenario would be devastating. Many households organize their finances around weekly therapies, medications, devices, transportation, and school support. If coverage is no longer comprehensive or becomes dependent on particular negotiations, the cost is transferred to the family unit, which for many households would be an expense that is impossible to bear. Therefore, the disabled person could lose therapies or benefits that are essential for their development. In a country of eroded wages, disability treatment could become a privilege for few.
Also of concern is the mandatory re-registration of beneficiaries of non-contributory disability pensions. Although the Government argues the need to purge irregularities, organizations in the sector remember that each massive review process generates months of uncertainty, cumbersome procedures, repeated certificates and preventive suspensions. For people with reduced mobility, cognitive disorders or severe bureaucratic barriers, the administrative requirement can be a hidden exclusion.
Rejection. The reaction has already begun in the streets. Mass marches were held in front of the Ministry of Health with family members, workers and people with disabilities who denounced “adjustment” and “abandonment.” The protest included cessation of activities and warnings about a terminal crisis of the system: institutions in debt, delayed benefits and services operating at the limit.
The actress Lola Berthet He was one of the most forceful public voices. In statements published by different media, he questioned the spirit of the project and assured that the official policy “crushes rights”. His intervention brought visibility to a conflict that is often encapsulated in technical files, although it impacts specific lives: children with autism, adults with cerebral palsy, people with intellectual disabilities and entire families that depend on a constant assistance network.
Valentina Bassi, mother of an autistic boy, also rejected the project with her forceful conclusion: “It is a disastrous law.”he said, focusing on the elimination of the national nomenclature. “Without a nomenclature, each social work will charge what it wants.” He also maintains that the initiative “implies a setback of 30 years,” because it leaves providers and families subject to unequal negotiations and threatens the continuity of therapies, schools and specialized centers. And he adds: “The most terrible thing is what they imply, because the law is called ‘Against pension fraud’, that people with disabilities because they have pensions are criminals who attack the state’s finances. Crazy.”
Juan Grabois, in his own way, charged: “They spit in the faces of the disabled while they walk around in five-star hotels around the world.” Beyond its challenging tone, his statement summarizes the public sensitivity that any reform arouses in a particularly vulnerable universe.
Official voice. In turn, Mario Lugones, cardiologist and current Minister of Healthdefends a line of state reorganization based on efficiency, audits and reduction of expenses, for him, “unproductive.” In his defense. The new law describes that between 2003 and 2023 the amount of non-contributory disability pensions granted in the country had an exponential growth, going from 76 thousand benefits that existed in the first year, to more than 1.2 million benefits in 2023.
The bill announces that not even countries affected by war have had such an increase in their population of people with disabilities. The problem, critics point out, appears when pruning reaches essential structures of great human sensitivity. Because in disability we do not discuss privileges but support. Congress, which has already approved an emergency law on disabilities that the Government does not want to implement despite the fact that Justice ordered it to do so, will now have the last word. How much is the daily life of those who need the most support worth to the State?
If the response is measured only in fiscal terms, the real cost will be paid by retirees, university professors and people with disabilities, condemned to lose their rights.
