It is sad to see fathers and mothers begging for money for their children's medication. Ten years ago here in Nicaragua, it was almost a daily occurrence; now, rarely.
What changed?
The Sandinista government takes the constitutional guarantee of health care for all much more seriously than the previous Nicaraguan governments.
Today when I sat down to check email, this is what Mike had sent me from Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight:
Here’s a disturbing stat about the state of medical care access in the United States: A study of GoFundMe crowd sourced fundraising campaigns found that $930 million of $2 billion analyzed was for medical campaigns, or people who had to beg on the internet to pay for medical procedures. [Bloomberg via Ross Baird]
Instead of begging in parking lots, people in the United States are begging on-line.
Many people who voted for Pres. Trump and the current congressional members did not
know that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was the same as Obama Care and are losing their coverage.
Even our own son, Joseph, is losing his college's health insurance because of the repeal of the ACA. The small college used the ACA to insure their students who were not covered elsewhere for a fee.
When the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, The Atlantic published an article about how the U.S. still stood entirely alone in wealthy countries who do not provide universal health care for its citizens.
Though not on The Atlantic's map, Nicaragua does provide universal health care... such as it is. Nicaragua provides an insurance plan for people, who are formally employed, and universal care for those who are not enrolled and are by-and-large the most vulnerable...in other words, it has both single payer and universal health care plans.
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| photo by Bart Cleary |
Unfortunately the wealthy Nicaraguans have access to much higher quality private care that allows them to not bother or invest in the public care which lowers the quality of care the rest of the country.
Good or not-so-good, the reality in Nicaragua is: if a kid is sick in the middle of the night...a parent can then go to the hospital, have a doctor exam the child, either admit the child or send the child home with medicines without ever paying a bill or being harassed later to pay the bill.
We have had first hand experiences with this: Sarah - and later Joseph - had an allergic reaction with their throats starting to tingle, they received care without paying a dime.
No one should ever have to beg for health care. No one.
-Kathleen
