OBJECTIVES: To increase access to essential medicines by the poor, Remediar Program in Argentina performs a strategy based on the free provision of drugs at the public primary care centers. As a secondary objetive, the Program proposed a reorientation of the demand from hospitals to the primare care centers. The goals of this study are twofold: 1) to analyze the impact generated by the increase of health care demand induced by Remediar in the quality of primary health care services, according to health team members perception; and 2) to identify the variables (geographical, professional based, and Program based) that affect physiciansx satisfaction. METHODS: Argentine territory was divided into six regions, and surveys were design and collected from June to October 2005. Frequency and multivariate analysis were developed, incorporating logistic regresions (probit and linear models). RESULTS: Results show that 18% of professionals considered that duration of consultations did not change, while 31% believed that it changed significantly. Only 10% understood that consultation duration had grown “too much”, difficulting their job. Regarding the daily number of consultations, 69% considered that it increased since Remediar started, causing, according to 56% of respondents, a drop in the quality of the service. Health team satisfaction with the Progran was tested against a group of variables; a gap in professional satisfaction was identified between the Northeast (high) and the Northwest (low) region, the poorest areas in Argentina. Good perception increased with higher levels of the Programxs pharmaceutical coverage. On the other side, low levels of satisfaction were related to work overload before Remediar was launched. CONCLUSION: Although an increase of coverage was a main goal, results shows that the demand induced by Remediar did not have a correlation with supply planning, measured as infrastructure and professional office hours, affecting health care quality.