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Public Health Kids Services
(Picture courtesy of flickr.com.)
The nation of South Africa took a huge step toward equal access to opportunity for its citizens today by beginning national health care. While this nation cuts back services to the needy, the rest of the world advances beyond us into behavior that makes all people better off.
South Africa’s government has set out its plans to introduce a universal health care scheme.
A pilot scheme in 10 areas is to start in April 2012, and will then be phased in nationally over the next 14 years.
“These first steps towards establishing national health insurance are truly historic,” the health minister said.
Analysts say South Africa is one of the world’s most unequal societies, where quality health care is skewed towards the private sector.
(snip)
Last year, the governing African National Congress (ANC) estimated initial costs to set up the scheme would be about 128bn rand ($18bn; £11bn).
“The central challenge to the stability and well-being of our nation is reducing the deep inequality between rich and poor, between privilege and deprivation. This goes to the heart of South Africa’s future,” Mr Motsoaledi said.
South Africa is one of the nations of most inequitable distribution of its resources, and is struggling back from decades of colonial rule that left out its native population.
With this mammoth step toward civilized behavior, SA becomes another better country to live in. Hopefully, one day the United States will catch up. At the moment, though, we are falling farther behind.
The Affordable Care Act specified the distribution of an additional $11 billion over the next five years that would allow CHCs to nearly double their current capacity to 40 million patients by 2015. The FY 2011 discretionary funding reduction, however, cut the program’s funding by $600 million.
Our country became substandard by yet one more nation when SA took this impressive stride forward. Presently the U.S. is 37th in ranking for health care among nations. South Africa stands at 175th. This will set it forward, and the U.S. farther back.
35 Comments
I am very happy for the people of South Africa, who are choosing wisely to invest in health care that will probably easily pay for itself.
The United States continues to amaze me. I come from a medical family: my father and brother are pathologists (father retired), who had a good deal of study in the areas of disease, prevention, epidemics, and so on.
We do not know this country any more.
The way we are trending in the US with public health care decline is more than frightening to me. If we continue to fuck with health care enough, there will be no fixing anything, because a microbe will be the end of us.
BTW I love the CDC, but there are times when I am afraid to visit the site.
Great post.
Thanks, and agreed, the investment in health care is essential, for reasons other than just keeping society functional. It’s also very much part of the future – whether we are going to prosper or fall apart.
This story is one that needs repeating; thanks Ruth. Please don’t feel you are “doing wrong” but writing diaries about this again and again.
recommended and tweeted
More and more the USA looks like a nation run by cruel and hateful tyrants who don’t give a damn about anything but their own personal wealth.
KICK ALL THEIR ASSSES OUT IN 2012!
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Looks like the shock of the Shock Doctrine is wearing off in South Africa. They were big victims of it after they achieved independence, according to Naomi Klein.
Now Americans and Western Europeans are the target.
Klein’s book should be required reading.
One of the next things South Africa needs to do is cast off the same corporations who own and operate the private prisons here.
The law has not been signed yet. Nor has the extent of the coverage been decided. Much could be changed by 2014 when the law would most likely go into effect. So I think there isnt enough information yet to claim that South Africa has moved up in healthcare equality. As it stand right now South Africa has one of the worst divides between the wealthy and the extreme poor. And their present healthcare system shows this inequality.
So I would rather wait and see before I will start assuming anything.
Thanks, to all.
That health care for all has been proposed and is being studied with recommendation for implementation is extremely promising, and puts SA in a forefront of civilized, equitable treatment of its entire population – without ‘assuming’ it is all going immediately into effect. The problems of costs and access are addressed in the article referred to.
Scott, most members of the Florida Legislature, and top state managers can afford to do exactly that because they already have access to dirt-cheap, taxpayer-subsidized health insurance.
It’s a great deal. For them.
Scott reportedly pays $360 a year for coverage for himself and his wife. He is among 32,000 select state employees who pay very little out of pocket — as little as $8.34 a month — because the taxpayers cover their costs.
And that’s just the upper echelon employees.
“For all 176,000 state workers with government health care, Floridians spend $1.8 billion in health care costs,” The St. Petersburg Times reported this week. “That amounts to roughly $137 per year spent by every employed taxpayer over the age of 18.”
Gov. Scott once told CNN: “I clearly believe government run health care will be bad for you as a patient. It’ll be bad for you as a taxpayer.”
Bad for us maybe. Not bad for him.
SHAME SHAME USA…a medicare fraudster to boot
I’m glad someone has politicians wise enough to pass a good health care system for their country.
Called as long as I’ve got mine….
Ruth, thanks for a good piece. We can use every bit of optimistic, promising accomplishment we can find…..
Tsk, tsk, Ruth. Don’t you know that helping all the people is socialism? And socialism is bad.
Meanwhile, I just got a notice in the mail that my health insurance premium is going up 5% on October 1. The inflation rate for 2010 was 1.64%. It has gone over 3% recently, but that’s still less than 5%.
That high are we? I’m surprised.
hi there,we suk best USA,USA
Why don’t we just outsource the whole US sick care system to Canada. They spend far less per capita on care yet achieve as good or better results. Maybe because the Canadians don’t have that huge 10 ton bag of shit around their neck – the US political class.
Thanks for clearing up that misunderstanding earlier Rev! :)
Assumes an anthrocentric bias. Our crops receive very good health benefits, especially the infertile varieties.
I started reading it, but it was so unrelentingly horrifying that, once I got the idea, I just couldn’t keep reading it.
cause then the megalomaniacal corps wont get their $$$$$sawbucks….and they are just people too ya know/
chuckle,chuckle
Would anybody like to make a wager about which news organization will cover this first? I’ve got “None”. Anybody else?
I’m referring to television
negatrol
Great news for South Africa, and hopefully a wake up for the U.S. I’d love to think at some point we’d be able to just shame the right into admitting single payer is best, but this is starting to look like the death penalty in that what they do in civilized places matters not to people in Washington.
I agree. Sadly, some people can’t think outside the box.
Freedom from health care isn’t free!!
What South Africa can do, Mr. O can not.
Just remember the voters of this country voted “Washington” into office. And Mr. O. can’t do much of anything, especially if it costs money, without congress. So don’t hate the players; hate the game.
American Exceptionalism strikes again. And, BTW, what’s your evidence to prove that the USA is a civilized country?
“More and more the USA looks like a nation run by cruel and hateful tyrants who don’t give a damn about anything but their own personal wealth.”
Looks like?
“Don’t you know that helping all the people is socialism?”
Don’t you know that helping all the people with their own tax dollars is socialism?
Fixed!
Investment in health care is also the financially prudent way – for the long term. What we have presently, here in the US, is short term, greedy profiteering by insurance companies and for-profit medical “businesses.”
I thought this was Ruth’s diary, but the computer goblins thwarted my finding it yesterday. Many thanks to the attentive FDL PTB that front-paged it today. I’ve shared it now in discussions about the Eleventh Circuit’s decision on the health insurance company bonanza known as the individual mandate. Thanks, Ruth!
Funny, I just found out myself that it was up, thanks, FDL PTB, it is important that come from behind SA has leapt ahead of us, and shown real concern for its own populace. We can learn, and we must.
You can show all the ratings you want. No one is leaving the US for South African healthcare. That ought to tell you something.