Bush wants my mom to pay for his war
By Bev Hiestand
As a political activist and health-care worker, I am aware
of the rapid decline in health-care delivery in this country.
But it became much more personal in recent days as I was forced
by circumstances to place my 84-year-old mom--a health-care
worker her whole life, too--in an Adult Assisted Living
facility.
It certainly felt like cruelty to another human being as I
ripped my mother away from all those things that were her life
and placed her in an institution in another city, 45 minutes
from the countryside she loves so much, her friends and her
family.
And why? Because we were told by that she could not stay in
the hospital another day and the administrators could not find
a place for her closer to home.
My mom is an elder who has only a Social Security check and
small pension to live on. Based on rules established by
Medicaid and followed by the commercial insurance companies,
she could not be covered for her three-day hospitalization
without personally shelling out as much as $2,000 a day.
The doctor had determined that her unbearable pain might be
due to a spinal compression fracture resulting from a fall.
This injury and pain is even more of a care crisis because she
is unable to walk well or care for herself. She is nearly
blind, has difficulty hearing and has many physical problems
requiring medications and medical care.
Yet she did not meet the criteria to keep her in the
hospital long enough for an appropriate place near her home and
loved ones to be found.
After 12 hours of worry, anger and frustration dealing with
this inhumane system at the hospital, my mother was forced to
leave. It wasn't the fault of the health-care workers; they
were all wonderful and caring. Their facial expressions were
pained as they said to us: "Isn't this awful? What's happened
to our health-care system in this county is a crime!"
They noted that this happens every day. In fact, the elderly
woman sharing the hospital room with my mom was going through
the same thing. She ended up in a town 45 minutes away from her
home. Her daughter hopes she will be able to find a place for
her closer to home in the not-too-distant future.
Cold, frightened and isolated
So at 7 p.m. my mom and I arrived at the new facility. We
found ourselves sitting in a big, almost-empty room with one
insufficient ceiling light, a lone bed and a dresser. The walls
were totally bare and no one had had time to turn up the heat
before she arrived. So it was cold.
She was devastated. I was too.
There was no phone in her room because we had no time to
prepare. She was cut off from her family and all the people who
were part of her life.
She was very frightened, afraid she would not have the
assistance she needed for the most basic activities of daily
life.
Just before I left for the evening, an African American
patient-care aide stuck her head in the door and told Mom:
"Don't be scared. I will be here all night and I am going to
look in on you every two hours to make sure you are okay. I
will wake you in the morning in time for breakfast and we will
see that you get down there in your wheelchair."
She was very sweet to be so comforting to my mother--I know
how overworked she is. I thought about how in spite of the
endless oppression from racism and exploitation that people
must face daily in this system they manage to resist the
coldness that characterizes their oppressors.
I've lost a lot of work hours at the hospital where I am
employed because I've been dealing with my mom's health crisis.
As I now face the need to travel long distances several times a
week after work to be with my mother and help her to deal with
the many aspects of life that are a challenge for her, I wonder
about all those who do not have cars or the means to travel
these distances.
It reminds me of all the prisoners who have been
incarcerated far away from their families. I can't help feeling
angry that my mother and so many other elderly people are being
housed in institutions in isolation, unable to make the
contributions to this society that their experience, wisdom and
spirit could offer.
Capitalism: war abroad, war at home
Why is there such a shortage of hospital beds for the
elderly? During the last decade tens of thousands of hospital
beds have been closed down as corporate health-care
organizations and their political allies have determined that
these beds are not profitable.
This has moved what used to be hospital care into people's
homes, mainly performed by already overworked family members,
some of them elders themselves.
While it is true that some of the care that used to be
provided in hospitals could be provided in other settings, the
fact is that there is a shortage of appropriate facilities. Too
many people are being forced out of the hospital into
situations that compromise not only the patients' safety and
well-being but their families'.
Through our unions and progressive political movements we
need to demand that there be no more closings of hospitals and
layoffs of health-care workers. Open up more beds as a
transition for those who are waiting to go into facilities near
their homes. Allow all those who find home care too demanding
to return to the hospital and get the care they deserve.
We have been told this is too expensive, that society cannot
afford it. However, the Bush administration, answering to Big
Oil and other capitalist conglomerates, is rushing into a war
against the Iraqi people that, according to Wall Street Journal
estimates, may cost at least $200 billion. This does not
include the cost of a prolonged military occupation that one
economist estimates could run as high as $1.9 trillion.
Who will pay for this war? Bush wants my mother, our
families, co-workers and neighbors to pay. Most state budgets
are already running on a deficit leading to cutbacks in not
only health care but funding for schools, housing, drug
rehabilitation and many other critical programs. Meanwhile,
this surplus wealth we all created is funneled to the Pentagon
and Wall Street.
Bush wants Iraqi families, workers and neighbors to pay,
too. What must it be like for a daughter in Iraq to try to find
care for an elderly mother when the entire infrastructure of
the country has already been badly damaged by the previous war,
the economy strangled by U.S.-led economic sanctions and the
country facing a deadly rain of bombs in a full-scale Pentagon
war? The U.S. capitalist class wants the Iraqi people to pay
with their oil and the profits from conquest of the Middle
East.
And what will happen when many of the hundreds of thousands
of soldiers who do return from war come back disabled or sick?
One in every four soldiers in the first Gulf War reportedly has
long-term and sometimes life-threatening illnesses. This will
be even more strain on a health-care system that is already
buckling under the weight of the burden of ever more
profits.
That's why, even though I'm stretched for time traveling to
help care for my mother and scrambling at my own hospital to
hold on to my job, I'm working overtime trying to organize a
regional upstate New York anti-war network.
But despite my political awareness about this "profit before
human need society," I find myself at times feeling responsible
for leaving my mom in these awful circumstances.
One of the hardest things about living under capitalism is
that it isn't the ruling class members themselves who carry out
the terrible crimes against people that this economic system
mandates.
Capitalism is an economic machine that conducts its
exploitation and oppression silently and often impersonally.
This makes its victims feel powerless to stop it, and therefore
responsible for the toll that it takes on them and their loved
ones.
Because I cannot protect each person I love from the cruelty
of life under capitalism, I continue to organize to sweep this
unjust and unequal system into the dustbin of history and
replace it with a rational economy based on planned production
to meet human needs.
It's a future that I can actually picture and help fashion
based on the brutal experience of living under capitalism.
Reprinted from the Dec. 12, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
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