Money shouldn’t decide whether you live or die

By Erna Mahyuni, The Malay Mail

Do you believe in government-subsidised healthcare? A friend of mine doesn’t.

“People should just buy insurance,” he said.

But that premise assumes that everyone would have the spare change to pay for health insurance.

The problem with privilege is that it creates this bubble around people’s hearts and minds, that oversimplifies the troubles of the world and the sufferings of others.

It is simpler to just tell yourself that all poor people need to do to stop being poor is to work hard, stop being lazy and oh, stop being poor.

It is far easier to do that than admit that sometimes it’s all about luck.

If you were born to rich parents, with a close, extended family that is also rich and you grew up in a First World country into a privileged class and race, and to top all that, you were born with neither physical or mental challenges… congratulations, you have already won the lottery we call life.

Now let us flip that around. Let’s say you were born to an unemployed, malnourished, unmarried single mother who is also orphaned. You were born premature, and debilitated physically and mentally, perhaps due to your mother not getting enough sustenance. To top it all off, your mother dies in childbirth and you happen to be born in a country at war or with inadequate healthcare facilities.

I am sorry, you will then be lucky to survive your first week of life, let alone your first day. And the “best” bit is that the situation I am describing is not fantasy but reality. It is the 21st century and babies (and their mothers) are still dying at birth.

So in that vein of reasoning, being born in Malaysia is, in a way, lucky.

For comparison, referring to the CIA World Factbook: In Afghanistan, 119 babies die for every 1,000 babies born. In Malaysia, only 14 babies die per 1,000. In Australia, the mortality rate is only 4 babies.

At least here, the poor still have our public hospitals to rely on for general healthcare and yes, giving birth. But if you’re poor and need special care, well, then things get difficult.

Here is where my privileged friends go “Well, who asked them not to take care of their health? Eat unhealthy food, smoke, throw their money away and not save… of course-lah get sick.”

When you are poor, you eat what you can afford. And sometimes that’s just a plate of rice and not much else, if you’re lucky. Vegetables? Fruit? Supplements? Have you seen how much even rambutans and langsat cost these days?

Look, I know that it’s anathema to the “hard-working” rich to have to “subsidise” the poor but decent healthcare should be a human right and not a privilege. Who is going to do the menial work if not the poor?

It is bad enough that poor people are denigrated for doing honest, important work like cleaning drains and picking up our trash. Why shouldn’t they at least be taken care of for doing the things that we, the privileged desk workers, would never dream of doing?

Yes, good healthcare is expensive. Skilled doctors, the right facilities all need paying for. But unless we find a way to give the poor access to healthcare, we are doomed to a future where the rich will decide only they deserve a shot at life.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online.