On Monday morning I was standing bleary eyed in the Paris Charles de Gualle airport waiting for a flight to Amsterdam (and then onto Dar es Salaam) when I heard my cell phone beep indicating I had a text message.
I opened the message and read something that, in a country with often strong anti-American sentiment, made me proud to be an American.
From Ameet: “Snap, healthcare bill passed!”
Living in Tanzania, it can be difficult to keep up with the international news, but the healthcare debate has been one thing I have tried to keep tabs on. Last fall Ameet used some of his precious time with a wifi connection to download Obama’s speech on healthcare (and then Andrew, Ameet and I all listened to it together); when I meet other Americans visiting TZ I routinely ask them about the status of the healthcare bill and I try to keep up with the news coverage on it.
So to hear that Congress had (FINALLY) passed a healthcare bill overwhelmed me, then and now, with a flood of emotions…excitement, pride and relief. Maybe it was the lack of sleep (been up since 5:30am) or being out of the country that made me feel nostalgic, but what I think really made this bill passing feel so personal was that my country, our country, had just taken the first critical step towards the realization that in the wealthiest country in the world, people should not die or suffer massive financial repercussions because they get sick.
Obviously access to healthcare is something I feel strongly about. And I admit that it tends to be the one political issue that I simply cannot fathom, much less understand, the opposing sides position on (socialized medicine?! What?! Have you BEEN to a socialist country?).
However, biases notwithstanding, healthcare reform matters to me for numerous reasons, but one of them is that although I’m from the richest country in the world, I live in one of the poorest. In Tanzania if someone gets sick with diarrhea they can die because there isn’t an IV to give them fluids; health centers don’t have rubber gloves, much less ambulances, operating rooms, or a surgeon (or actual doctor) within miles, and we don’t even know for sure how many women die in childbirth here (but we know it’s a lot).
But healthcare here is free.
While the healthcare system in Tanzania might not be the strongest, the fact that it is available to every person, I think says something about the value the country places on of trying to ensure good health: we may not have a lot, but we think it’s important for people to be healthy.
Up until last Tuesday, that wasn’t a promise the US necessarily made to its citizens. Even though we have more resources and access to care than any other place on earth, in the US if you could pay then you got coverage; if you couldn’t then you didn’t.
The commodification of peoples’ health, to the extent that we will allow someone to die or suffer massively to protect a company’s bottom line strikes me as unconscionable. There are enough people in this world that die for lack of healthcare services; people should not be allowed to die for lack of insurance coverage.
Healthcare reform in the US is a fight that’s been waged for literally decades, and while the bill signed into law on Tuesday is far from perfect, it’s a step. This is the first major social legislation passed in the United States since Medicare and it moves us in the direction of ensuring basic healthcare as a human right to all Americans.
Reading the news the last couple of days following when the bill was signed into law it’s incredibly disappointing to see that something like improving healthcare has incited such violence, and to my mind, lunacy. From my current vantage point in Africa, it seems that if a country like Tanzania can at least attempt to provide basic healthcare for its people, then we certainly ought to be able to do it in America. Peacefully and with some dignity.
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