Social Security in Crisis: Over One Million Members Lost Since 2023, Increasing Pressure on Public Health

Accompanied by the loss of registered private jobs, the coverage of national social security has fallen by 1,028,412 beneficiaries of the solidarity system since November 2023, according to data from the Superintendency of Health Services collected by the Instituto Argentina Grande (IAG). In the first quarter of 2026, it was detected that more than 1.2 million people entered the public health system compared to 2023, with the most vulnerable being young people aged 15 to 29, among whom 49.9% depend exclusively on this system.

Among the main entities, only one managed to expand. This is OSDEPYM, the social security for self-employed workers, explained by the growth of this segment of workers. The other social security entities have declined.

OSECAC, linked to commerce workers, recorded a 20.2% drop in the number of beneficiaries since November 2023. In the case of OSPRERA, corresponding to rural workers, the reduction was 15.9%, while OSPCN, which concentrates on state employees, lost 19.1% of its members.

The deterioration also affected OSPeCon, linked to construction workers, which recorded a 25.4% decrease, and OSPe, corresponding to oil workers, whose number of beneficiaries fell by 5.1%.

In all cases, these sectors suffered sharp declines in registered employment, except for rural workers. Since November 2023, construction has lost 13.8% of its employees until April of this year (-60,646 jobs), while commerce saw a decrease of 0.8% (-9,413 jobs) and the oil sector, 8.8% (-8,282 jobs). State employees, meanwhile, suffered a decrease of 2.1% of workers (-73,052).

The exception was OSDEPYM, the social security for self-employed workers, which increased its number of members by 154% during the same period, in which the number of registered individuals grew by 7.4%.

In the analyzed period, more than 235,000 registered private jobs were lost, in addition to another 73,000 public jobs. Thus, not only does the worker fall outside the coverage of social security, but the loss also affects the family group.

The phenomenon is also combined with a sharp rise in the cost of private health insurance. With the deregulation of private health insurance, premiums increased by 460%, against an accumulated inflation of 320% in the same period. The result is a reduction in the universe of people with some type of private coverage.

More than 1.2 million people were left without private coverage.

Data from the Permanent Household Survey shows that in the fourth quarter of 2023 there were 9,428,131 people without private health insurance, social security, or mutual aid. By the first quarter of 2026, that number had risen to 10,674,416 people.

This implies 1,246,285 more people without private coverage, raising the proportion of the total population from 32% to 35.6%.

The loss of coverage implies greater pressure on hospitals and public health centers, which also lack sufficient resources. It is estimated that in the last analyzed quarter 231,141 people became dependent on the public health system.

The deterioration is even more pronounced among young people aged 15 to 29. There, 49.9% of individuals did not have social security, private health insurance, or mutual aid and depended exclusively on the public system. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, there are 438,790 more young people in that situation.

This represented a growth of 15.3%, the largest relative increase among the analyzed age groups.

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