People have had enough.
It takes a lot of voter discontent for a Pirate Party to become the highest polling party in the country by a sizeable margin and hold that position over long periods. But that’s exactly the situation in Iceland today. We’ve had a number of conservative governments in recent years, then one liberal government in power during the fallout of the world’s largest (per capita) financial crisis (an unenviable position to say the least), followed by another conservative government.
I can’t even begin to get into all of the ridiculous actions of our conservative government (see this entry for the last time I wrote about it). Right now most people are still seething over how a bank that the government bailed out (yes, we bailed out banks with taxpayer money) sold off its stake in payment processing company Borgun to a company owned in large part by the uncle and cousin of the head of the conservative party at less than 1/5th of their market value, without taking bids. Contrary to the popular myth that Iceland is big on investigating corruption, as usual, there will be no special prosecutor (very few of these sort of things ever get investigated, much less prosecuted).
But apart from all of these big incidents which show up every few weeks, there’s the slow, steady effect of the conservative cuts to the welfare system, and perhaps none is more acute than that to the healthcare system. Even while our economy was booming before the 2007 crash, they were cutting it. Our previous, liberal government was in a financial crash; they were in anything but a position to strengthen it. And our current government has gone particularly hard against it. There’s a general sense that the healthcare system is now a shadow of its former self.
Which is why so many people on my Facebook were sharing this article — their posts dripping with genuine outrage:
Ragnheiður paid $79 to find out that she had late-stage cancer
It’s the story of a 33-year old adventure-loving mother who came down with an unknown illness. The background:
“I came down with a lot of pain in my side, fever and infection in the blood”
Ragnheiður laid in the hospital for around a month and during that time went through all the tests and scans that were possible. The doctors seemed to never be able to figure out what caused all of this infection in the blood.
Eventually something was seen in the liver and abdominal cavity. The doctors were however not immediately sure it was cancer.
Between Christmas and New Years 2015 Ragnheiður underwent an abdominal procedure where the swelling was seen in the abdominal cavity in the images was removed. She returned to the doctor on January 13th to find out that it was a cancerous tumor.
She is also unemployed, having quit her job because she was too sick to keep up before she got the diagnosis. Now, here’s the outrageous part:
She’s now very poorly prepared to handle the costs that accompany being diagnosed with cancer.
“My heart dropped the other day when I found out what it was going to cost. I have no means for this.”
“As it is now I have to go to Denmark (for a scan). I’ll have all my costs reimbursed, but not my mother who will come with me. Until then I have to pay for the costs myself. I have no means to book a flight, lodgings and everything that comes with going on this trip.” At the end of the trip Ragnheiður will begin on a chemotherapy treatment which will take at least six months.
…
Ragnheiður is unhappy with how much she and others in the same situation have to pay out of their pockets for being seriously ill. She doesn’t just have an untreatable sickness, but also major financial concerns.
„In other Nordic states people never need to open up their wallet while cancer patients in Iceland need to every single time they go to a specialist, take a blood test, or start chemotherapy” says Ragnheiður who recalls how it was when she got the worst news of her life.
„The day when I got the news that I had fourth-stage cancer I paid $60 for the oncologist visit and $19 for the blood test. There is so much wrong with this.“
As with most articles in Iceland about people in trouble, it ends with her bank information so that readers can donate to her to help her with her expenses.
Now, of course, those of you reading in the US have a general sense of what oncologist visits and cancer screening tests costs for unemployed people. Yet here she only has to pay copays, and has all of her travel paid for to Denmark for tests and treatments that are not available here, not to mention a month in the hospital undergoing countless tests with no annual cap.
Peoples’ responses were furious:
Why are we paying taxes here for all of our lives? This is so disgusting
Our system is shameful in regards to cancer patients, especially young people :(
This healthcare system of ours is shameful.
This is one of those things that gets people to call the healthcare system here a “sickness system”. This should be categorized under that which the editor said: “This is disgusting” — it’s totally disgusting!
Should sick people have to support the healthcare system? Tragic.
I lived home in Iceland when I got my cancer around ‘91 to ‘94. First in the ovaries which were removed along with the fallopian tubes. Then breast cancer and one breast was removed and shortly thereafter a quarter of the other breast was taken. I went in surgery and they removed part of my stomach to make a new breast and it turned out excellent. EVERYTHING that accompanied it didn’t cost a single króna! What is the difference from that timeperiod and today? Don’t people pay the same taxes which should give us a worry-free life? This situation is ridiculously SHAMEFUL!
And on… and on… and on. Furious.
Don’t get me wrong — it absolutely could be better. Other Nordic states do it better. If we weren’t diverting so much money into corruption and maintaining one of the highest income inequalities of the Nordic states, absolutely it could be better! But as it stands, this is the sort of situation that inspires outrage.
I mentioned to a couple friends on Facebook about how I had to pause for a minute to realize that this level of coverage for an unemployed woman was meant to be an offense to human dignity, and how thankful I am — flaws and all — that we have at least the system that we do, rather than the system in the US. And without a fault, they responded either:
1) It’s wrong to compare to the disaster of a system they have in the US, you might as well compare us with Somalia.
2) Why do you think everyone runs the other way whenever they hear people talk about “privatization”?
I have not once — once — encountered in person a single person here who wishes the system would be more like America’s. Even the hard right-wing politicians who sometimes mention privatization generally make sure to cover their bases by adding that they’re not looking to establish a system like America’s, that they’re just trying to add more “choice”. Whenever anyone wants to oppose a healthcare policy, a standard scare tactic is to say that it’s going to lead to us ending up with a healthcare system like America’s.
I do hope we can improve our system up to the standards of our other Nordic neighbors. And I so look forward to seeing the door hit our right-wing government on the way out. But all of that said, I am very thankful for what we have.
America… you’re Iceland’s cautionary tale.