A coalition partner says she was not told
Patricia Bullrich said she was unaware of the disability changes the government of Javier Milei folded into the 2027 budget bill, even though she sits on the ruling coalition's political roundtable. Speaking to journalist Ignacio Ortelli on Radio Rivadavia, the senator and La Libertad Avanza bloc leader said the subject never surfaced in those meetings and that the budget arrived with the modifications already inserted, without warning to coalition partners. She stressed that she was telling the truth about not having been informed.[S1][S2][S3]
Bullrich described the political cost of that gap. When bloc leaders reach Congress without knowing what a bill contains, she argued, they are left exposed before their own legislators and the opposition, and can appear either foolish or as though they misled colleagues. She said this wears on relationships and that the coalition should fix such problems. She also noted that disability policy was already under discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, where the ruling party and opposition had reached a political agreement to handle it in a particular way, an understanding now in question.[S1][S2][S3]
Because the Senate reviews budget legislation, Bullrich said her chamber must wait to see what text arrives from the lower house before taking a position, and she described the debate as quite thorny. The budget bill formally entered the Chamber of Deputies on September 15, signed by Cabinet Chief Diego Santilli and Economy Minister Luis Caputo. Opposition lawmakers reacted at once: Deputy Juan Marino of Union por la Patria called the changes illegal and unconstitutional and said the bill seeks to dismantle the disability emergency law, while Deputy Esteban Paulon of Santa Fe noted the changes surfaced after La Libertad Avanza had pushed its own emergency initiative with allied blocs without disclosing its real content.[S1][S2][S3]
What the budget rewrites
Chapter VI of the bill, articles 36 through 41, permanently alters core pillars of the disability support system. It repeals several articles of the disability emergency law, 27.793, and makes deep changes to law 24.901, which has underpinned basic comprehensive care benefits since 1997. Article 36 replaces the non-contributory disability pension for social protection with a non-contributory pension for work invalidity set at 70 percent of the minimum retirement benefit, and article 37 makes that benefit incompatible with any formal employment or enrollment in the general or simplified tax regime, including monotributo registration. That removes the current option of keeping the pension while holding registered work paying up to two minimum wages.[S1][S3]
The reform's core targets the Nomenclator of Basic Benefits. Article 39 provides that it will no longer include universal values, eliminating the mandatory reference fees for health insurers, private prepaid plans and providers. In practice, families of people with disabilities would have to negotiate the price of therapies and treatments individually with their coverage. Actress Valentina Bassi, mother of a teenager with autism, described the deregulation of the single nomenclator as lethal on Radio Con Vos. The single disability certificate would also cease to function as a direct guarantee of access to benefits.[S1][S3]
Deputy Maximiliano Ferraro of the Civic Coalition said the reform removes two fundamental principles: that fees be the same for all health insurers, prepaid plans and the state, and that those fees update automatically through the retirement mobility index. Writing on X, he said the bill replaces a single-fee criterion for the whole system with a fragmented, discretionary and uncertain scheme. Updates to benefit values would also stop being automatic and monthly: the government would set amounts quarterly at its own discretion, turning to the INDEC consumer price index only if that adjustment is not made on time, and the annual cost study for each benefit would be scrapped.[S1]
