A few days ago I watched the film “Value‘, another story about the reality of the victims of the September 11th attack and what happened later when their families had to be compensated.
Michael Keaton masterfully plays the lawyer who headed the compensation fund set up for this purpose. The debate between his duty to serve the interests of the insurance companies and his conscience to know the stories of every biased life. In this country too, we will one day succumb to the interests of the insurance lobby, which puts a price on people’s lives and health… are all lives worth the same? Do you see it.
The really dramatic thing – and it wasn’t fiction either – came after the film, when I got hooked – there are no commercials on La 2 – with a documentary about healthcare in the USA. Good about the non-healthcare of a country that runs the global economy and dictates what other countries should and should do, but leaves its citizens dying at the doors of hospitals. And to cancer patients without treatment, to diabetics without insulin, to people who cannot see, to blind people and to children without medication. Either you have money to pay for fifteen thousand euros worth of health insurance per year or you are literally dead.
The queues of dying people, sick people and mothers with babies waiting all cold nights outside the barracks doors to be treated by volunteer doctors shocked me. Meanwhile, New York-based Pfizer became the first pharmaceutical company to bill more than 100,000 million euros a year, with a dizzying profit growth of 43%.
When Obama became president, he managed to pass the law called “Obamacare.” Nothing even remotely comparable to our health care system (called “communist” by the great America, by the way), but it at least took a step forward and guaranteed some essential minimum requirements for low-cost health care. Well, it turns out that when Trump became president (the first former president to be impeached for 37 serious crimes in the history of the United States), he decided to repeal this law and take that breath away from Americans’ health.
The vote took place on a day at the end of July 2017. As expected, all Democrats voted against the repeal. And suddenly two women, Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, came along and put their principles above their party membership and also voted against it. In the vote, 49 Republicans voted for repeal and 50 voted against it. There was only one vote left. That of Republican John McCain. And McCain came, stood up, approached, and voted against taking away that little bit of health from millions of Americans. With 51 votes against and 49 in favor, Trump lost his miserable proposal. The senator who avoided disgrace died of brain cancer a year later.
Mitt Romney recently announced his final resignation from the Senate. Yes, that other Republican senator, but he voted to impeach Donald Trump. And the loyalty to the principles still exists. I’ll leave it at that.
About this blog
I come from Córdoba, from the Ciudad Jardín neighborhood and I am a citizen of the world. The eighties were my moment; hyperactive and multi-faceted, granddaughter, daughter, sister, mother and companion in fate and for as long as I can remember, I have been and felt like a lawyer.
Peep Longstocking taught me that we too can be free, owners of our destiny, not to be subjugated and to defend the weakest. I have been calling for justice and using my voice to highlight the words of others for many years. Words of justification, complaint, demand or response, words of supplication or consent and even words of love or lack of love. Now and here I will be the sole owner of the words that I offer you in this cupboard, the tray that reminds me so much of my grandmother and in which I want to serve you what my female retina points to the past, present and Future concentrated in one city. as unique as this one.
