Editor’s note: This article was first published in February 2012, as an opinion piece reacting to a remark by Patricia Flores, then Deputy Minister for Healthcare in the Madrid regional government. She may no longer hold the post.
Another day when you sit down to write, but first you read a few words from our representatives that, at first, you’d rather ignore. In the end, though, you can’t keep quiet.
As some of you will already know, Patricia Flores, Deputy Minister for Healthcare in the Madrid regional government, has hinted at whether it makes sense for chronic patients to live “for free” off the Spanish health system, as reported by Diario Médico.
Since time immemorial, in hundreds of cultures that have existed since the world began, few warriors lived to old age, but those who did became gods and wise men to the rest of the “tribe” or community. They were a burden for the more nomadic civilizations, and in fact many young lives were lost protecting the elderly, who couldn’t fend for themselves. People gave their lives for them.
Today, our elders are, first of all, the ones who gave us life. Second, they’re the ones whose hard work paid for today’s health system. Third, they paid for the political campaigns of the political parties (both government and opposition). In short, they have more than paid for what they have earned by right (a social right) through their own effort. Healthcare in Spain isn’t free, neither for these elderly people nor for us younger ones, so, to begin with, a minimum of respect for these chronic patients wouldn’t go amiss.
Let’s talk about chronic patients
I’d much rather my taxes went to the social rights of our elders than to a seriously chronic patient like the financial system. The financial system is currently the scourge of the economy.
The political caste is an economic chronic patient too. While an elderly person has earned respect over a whole lifetime, today’s politicians, I’m sorry to say, haven’t earned my respect, much less a lifetime pension for a few months or a few years of work. Their privileges are another chronic disease, and there’s nothing more ungrateful than spitting in the face of the people who pay for your high standard of living, to the point of living in a kind of premier league that doesn’t identify with the real problems the population is suffering. In other times (the Nazi Holocaust aside), that comment would have cost this lady her job.
In fact, I still can’t get my head around those words coming out of the mouth of a politician who probably has a father, a mother, grandparents…
I believe that as long as politicians can’t identify with people’s real problems, they’ll hardly be able to do anything for them. It’s like a doctor starting to operate without ever having seen a human body. Honestly, her comment would merely be sad if it weren’t so deeply unpleasant.
Featured image: Luis García, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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