[lbo-talk] health and debt

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Mon May 10 08:51:54 PDT 2010


[WS:] It is my understand that the apartheid era SA had a robust welfare state, albeit for whites only. Neoliberal policies of the post-apartheid gov't seriously undermined it. This led to some very peculiar outcomes which I observed in Pretoria a couple of years ago. Unlike in the US, most panhandlers were white males. When I made that observation to my SA host, he explained that the dismantling of the welfare state had a particularly harsh effects on poor whites, because blacks developed extensive social support networks to deal with harsh conditions under apartheid.

OTOH, a US acquaintance of mine had an emergency hospital visit in Cape Town. She was told that, being a foreign citizen, she had to pay for the service. Her total bill was about $200 - she commented that she would pay more for a bandage in a US hospital.

Wojtek

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Ismail Lagardien <ilagardien at yahoo.com>wrote:


>
>
> so.... the calls and letters from collecting agency has arrived
>
> the bill: treatment by a county hospital for flu
>
> this shit didn't even happen in apartheid south africa!
>
>
>
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