Healthcare: only a problem for the poor

Last Saturday, 5,000 people took to the streets to express our outrage at the fact that Lanzarote lacks a radiotherapy service. At the end of the march, the AFOL spokesperson, at the door of the Cabildo, shared the anger and helplessness produced by listening to the excuses that the Government of the Canary Islands has been throwing in our faces for years "as if we were children who are satisfied with a "yes, we will" or a "we can't, there is no money", said Carmen Arrocha.

For a councilor of the Cabildo of Lanzarote it is especially unbearable to hear that "there is no money" at this precise moment in which, in a few days, the Cabildo's budgets for this year, which have been presented as "the largest in history", will begin to be discussed. And so it is, it is the largest budget in the history of the Island Council with more than 183 million euros thanks to the 38 million euros budgeted that come from the famous funds of the Canary Islands Development Fund (FDCAN), a total of 1,600 million euros in ten years that the Government of the Canary Islands decided could not be allocated to Health or Education.

In the AFOL study on the interest / cost of implementing a radiotherapy service on the island, the cost of building the bunker and installing the necessary equipment is around 2.8 million euros to which, obviously, the cost of the personnel necessary for its start-up would have to be added. I will cite only some of the projects that the Cabildo plans to finance with FDCAN funds in the coming years:

Island Olympic swimming pool: 3 million euros

Adaptation of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Arrecife: 4.4 million euros

La Fermina nautical center: 4.5 million euros

Bike path: 5.1 million euros

Improved mobility in tourist areas: 5.2 million euros

Rehabilitation of spaces for tourist use: 5.8 million euros

Smart Island Project (new technologies linked to tourism): 7.2 million euros

Tourist dynamization infrastructures: 7.5 million euros

Island Plan for Open Commercial Zones: 25 million euros

It goes without saying that possibly all these projects will be very interesting for the island, but putting them on the table without having resolved the basic needs of the population (and a radiotherapy unit is) and alleging, when it is not true, that there is a lack of economic resources, is an insult to citizens and, ultimately, is a symptom that we live in a sick society.

Of course, in the background there are other issues, as denounced by the AFOL spokesperson last Saturday. Mainly, the process of privatization of health, which our regional government is pushing for us to move towards a model, which already exists in other countries, where only those who have the money to pay for it can be treated by a doctor. "Does the 34 million euros that have been spent on private healthcare seem little to you?", echoed at the doors of the Cabildo.

But at the bottom of the bottom, in the deepest part of the problem, there is an element that we already pointed out in June 2015, when we took office as councilors of the Cabildo. It's not a money problem. It is a problem of blindness. What sensitivity is a deputy of the Canarian Parliament who earns 7,500 euros a month going to have? What vision can someone have who knows that if he/she or someone close to him/her encounters a serious illness, he/she will be able to go immediately to the best private hospitals? What position are those who are committed to privatizing healthcare going to defend so that a few (including them, of course) can do business with the suffering of the majority? What do they care about solving a problem that is only for the poor?

*Carlos Meca, Podemos councilor in the Cabildo of Lanzarote