Opinion: Trumpcare is Trump cares nothing about you

A son’s promise

“I remember my mother. She was 52 years old when she died of ovarian cancer, and you know what she was thinking about in the last months of her life? She wasn't thinking about getting well. She wasn't thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality. She had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs. And she wasn't sure whether insurance was going to cover the medical expenses because they might consider this a pre-existing condition. I remember just being heartbroken, seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms. So, I have seen what it's like when somebody you love is suffering because of a broken health care system. And it's wrong. It's not who we are as a people.” Barack Obama [Wikipedia]

The quote above was the personal life story that inspired what we all know as Obamacare, the heartfelt promise of a son to anyone whose mother, relation or themselves might be faced with the onslaught of illness that they do not have to worry about the bills and forms.

This is the human story

Just imagine, faced with a life-threatening illness and all you can think about is whether you have enough to meet the payments to keep you alive. “She wasn't thinking about getting well. She wasn't thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality.” Yes, Stanley Ann Dunham was struck down with cancer and she was dead within a year of the diagnosis.

When she died in 1995 just 23 days short of her 53^rd birthday, Barack Obama had not even begun his political career, he was only married 3 years and she never got to see her grandchildren, they came much later. In what might well be the conspiracy of fate, his grandmother died just two days short of the historic election victory of 2008.

The decline in my health

However, let us leave politics aside and touch on the human stories. By the time, I had finished my contract in April 2009, which was the peak of my career in earnings along with the attendant signs that my health was beginning to deteriorate, I paid no particular heed to the danger ahead.

In the third week of June, I had guests visiting from London and Hong Kong; on Sunday, the 23^rd of June, we went to Kinderdijk to see the World Heritage Site of windmills and on our way back, literally, all strength ebbed out of me as we walked from Rotterdam Harbour to the station. When my guests who stayed for a week left on Tuesday morning, I went back to bed and woke up with blisters down my left arm, I had come down with shingles.

That did not stop me travelling to Berlin the next day for the CSD celebrations, but by the time I was ready to return five days later, I was too weak to handle my own luggage, the airline check-in clerk had to come round to place my luggage on the scales, I was taken by wheelchair to the lounge and then by airside vehicle to the plane.

In Amsterdam, staff were on hand to assist me and ensure I just about crawled into my home, exhausted to the point of expiry. Alarm bells were ringing, but I could not hear them. The shingles disappeared within two weeks.

The salvation of insurance

Within 3 months of that, I was admitted to hospital with full-blown AIDS, a culture of self-medication, blind stoicism, religion and just soldiering on had brought me to the very gates of death. Meanwhile, I was earning nothing and chomping through my savings completely oblivious of the entitlements I had earned over almost a decade of working in the Netherlands, what was I to do?

In 2006, the Netherlands introduced compulsory health insurance, a sort of mandated single-payer requirement that was generally affordable. I had the basic cover, but when I fell ill, that basic cover went the whole way to pay for everything needed to get me well again.

As part of my treatment, there was an 18-night stay in the hospital, full-board, 7 sessions of chemotherapy, each chemotherapy dose at today’s prices is 8,735 euros, my pills were about 2,500 euros a month for the first 6 months and insurance took care of everything.

Everyone for the few

That is the mystery of insurance – “a practice or arrangement by which a company or government agency provides a guarantee of compensation for specified loss, damage, illness, or death in return for payment of a premium.”

The idea is that not everyone would need to resort to it, but if the need comes, it is there to bear the burden. Without it, I would have died in 2009. That I have taken out of the health insurance pool more than I have put into it is just a matter of providence and regulatory processes put in by the government that everyone has equal assess to treatment at the point of need rather than with a bag of means.

Everyone who owns a car pays car insurance, not everyone would have an accident, buildings all have insurance, not every building burns down or collapses. The many in caters for the few mishaps. No one balks at the car or building insurance and health insurance is such an unthinkable thing? Really?

It is about a shared humanity, not socialism

There are different implementations of health insurance in the West, but America fares the worst in the provision of such. Some see the idea of health insurance as provided in Europe as the pinnacle of socialism, industry and profits must thrive in the provision of health and healthcare without the dead hand of government directing it and therein is the animosity against Obamacare from the conservatives.

The brother’s keeper concept has been lost, the heart of understanding human privation has been lost to ideology and politics. The politicians themselves are fully catered for health-wise, it is the people who have been seduced by the rhetoric that would suffer, people who would never have the deep pockets to meet the costs if illness strikes.

You can be down, but never out.

Unlike Stanley Ann Dunham, I did not have to worry about any insurance costs, I kept up with my affordable insurance premiums and soon learnt many months after of my social security entitlements that could cover most of my bills. However, that was not before I had suffered other privations pertaining to sustenance. I was back to work just under 7 months after my diagnosis.

Blog - Thought Picnic: No pills for the bills

Health insurance saved me and that is one of the great successes of the European social model that is under threat of being ripped apart in the UK with the way our NHS is being badly run by the Conservative government.

When I was down, insurance and welfare held the fort until I was able to get back up on my feet. If I all I could do was face bills and fill in forms without the space to think either about getting well or prepare for my eventual demise, a ‘luxury’ never afforded Stanley Ann Dunham, I probably would not be here writing this.

This is evil and greed at work

The desire to repeal and replace Obamacare is manifestly evil, it is borne of rabid ideological extremism to feather the bulging nest eggs of the already stupendously filthy rich whose greed for more wealth at the expense of a more equal humanity can never be sated.

It has not been costed, it has not been risk-assessed, it has not been studied, it has just been voted through to claim a legislative victory without a single care for those who would be most affected. [BBC News]

To quote a headline “The GOP's health care bill is officially a gigantic tax cut for the rich. (USNews)” This is was President Donald Trump is heralding, there is much else to say apart from that fact that the human story of affordable healthcare has been lost to the Shylocks of the 21^st Century, they don’t just want a pound of flesh, they want your heart whilst it still beats cooked for breakfast and if you’re still breathing, your brains for dinner.

Trumpcare is Trump cares nothing about you.

Jo Cox MP (1974 - 2016)

A sad day for our democracy

When I read earlier today that a member of the UK parliament had been attacked, I probably did not read the detail of the story thinking the dust will settle and everything will be fine soon.

I got home and was shocked to learn that Jo Cox MP for Batley and Spen in Yorkshire had died of injuries sustained from being shot and stabbed just in front of her surgery. This was a mother of two young children who would have turned 42 in just 6 days’ time. [BBC News]

The tributes that have poured out in sympathy and recognition of this amazing young woman who has had a lifetime career of fighting causes for the poor, the needy, the enslaved, the refugee and many other powerless and exploited makes her in the one year of her parliamentary representation a glowing example of our democracy and her appreciation of the privilege and responsibility her constituency placed on her to fight their cause.

She died in the line of duty, doing the fundamentals of constituency representation, meeting people, tackling issues and putting forward her embracing worldview when she was attacked.

A better world

Now, it is suggested her attacker who presumably is a loner who kept himself to himself but loved gardening said some words as he assailed her and wounded a couple of other bystanders, we may never fully understand why he chose to harm and kill this woman regardless of whatever strength of feeling and animus he had towards her.

In her maiden speech in the House of Commons made on the 3^rd of June 2015, as she spoke of the diversity of the constituency she represented, she made a very profound statement, “We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”

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Her widowed husband, Brendan Cox released a statement that included, “Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it every day of her life with an energy, and a zest for life that would exhaust most people.” [BBC News]

Tone it down

Now, MPs do face aggression and some have suffered physical attacks though it’s been about 25 years since an MP died as a result of such an attack.

We must reflect on what is becoming of our democracy, the disagreements leading to disagreeableness and egged on by rhetoric that would inspire some to violence. The use of otherness, separateness, division to accentuate difference and pitch our common humanity against each other for political gain.

The demonization of allies, partners, friends, neighbours, communities, religions, beliefs, of Brussels, of Europe, of foreigners, of immigrants, of countries and so on as we have seen in the recent London mayoral elections and the current #BREXIT debates. All this exacerbates the tendency to harm others in word and in deed. When we denigrate anyone of us, we create a negative atmosphere that registers with our basest instincts and it encourages the less disciplined amongst us to atrocious and heinous acts.

Leveraging fear and loathing towards professing a kind of exceptionalism and an incipient superiority complex in relation to equal participants in a wider regional bloc that always requires persuasion, debate, compromise and consensus to achieve common goals and ends to the benefit of all of us.

Her enduring legacy

Jo Cox in her short life saw a bigger picture, a shared humanity and the passion to speak up for the voiceless, it took her to places of conflict and suffering in the quest to make lives better, she had a big heart and open arms to people regardless of who they were and in the vigil kept for her earlier this evening, we saw how she had earned the respect of all who ever had the opportunity to have an encounter with her.

I did not know Jo Cox until today, but I will never forget her after today, the spirit of what she espoused is what we should all embrace, she was a Europhile, she believed in the European project, she said as much in her maiden speech and it is very possible that this contributed to the attack on her person.

We should when we have a platform understand the responsibility that comes with the ability to make people think or agitate them to mob violence. I would hope each and everyone approaches that responsibility with deep reflection that strengthens the togetherness of our diverse humanity. That is the legacy of Jo Cox, may her gentle soul rest in peace and may her loved ones find strength and fortitude in this unfortunate and deeply sad time of loss.