The politicisation of health care systems is living proof of the paucity of fresh ideas in politics that is driving people away from reason and into the hands of demigods.

The extremely disappointing response of our opposition to the incumbent government’s attempt to deal with a pandemic, unknown in scale to most of us alive, mirrors similar cringe-making goings-on in other countries.

Obamacare became the bogeyman of US politics. Doctors I spoke to seemed more focused on the additional workload and extra costs to them, ie, less profit, and, again, money was the issue for most conservatives who objected to increased insurance premiums and the tax increases the Affordable Care Act required. Only some cared that it may have negative effects on the quality of care.

In the UK, non-Conservatives were happy that PM Boris Johnson’s severe bout with covid19 made him realise the value of the internationally admired National Health Service (NHS).

But now, just months later, they have come around to thinking that the NHS is, in fact, not safe in his hands and they are suspicious of backdoor attacks upon it. Petitions abound, but I have not seen the evidence of foul play.

In TT, we take our health care for granted, like we do everything else, being the overindulged citizens we are. For sure, the system has its extreme challenges, but I would go out on a limb to say that we, the people, work in the system and we bring to it our negative attitudes, bad-mindedness, recalcitrance and the terrible weight of an inherited, stultifying bureaucracy that produces inefficiency.

I had the opportunity to interact with public and private medical care services in the last year, and those attitudes pervade both sectors, except that the profit motive demands more efficiency in private hospitals.

I think the Opposition should be pointing its guns at a different target.

All the parties who seek to govern us have overlooked the critical area of elder care, just as they have under-invested in early childhood provision.

For several years now, four female elders in our immediate family have been looked after by their children in their own homes. Lucky them, having ample pensions to cover their care costs. Without the financial means they themselves provide, it is hard to imagine the level of care they would have.

Apart from the finances, it is very demanding, emotionally and physically, looking after the elderly and even more so when they fall ill. It requires love, and from the professional carer it requires dedication, even a calling, which not all care providers possess.

[caption id="attachment_860196" align="alignnone" width="433"] Marina Salandy-Brown -[/caption]

I have been told by every single one of the procession of expensive private carers, all with experience in privately-run homes for the elderly (some are nurses), that they would never put their own parents into a home.

I do not know if and where there are public residential care homes for the elderly in TT, but one can only imagine, therefore, what conditions