Herding people into the private sector

Politics is not about animal husbandry, but on many occasions people are “herded”. At times, people are constrained to do what otherwise they are unwilling to do voluntarily. They are not made to do things by brute force, but because they cannot do otherwise.

There seems to be an underlying philosophy that anything the private sector provides is, far much better than any provision of the State. People are encouraged to take private pension schemes and to endorse private healthcare schemes. Private tuition and education seems to be more focused and better equipped than State education. Just as much as the consumer buys an ordinary commodity, essential human necessities have also found themselves on the market shelves.

There is nothing wrong in this. As long as you have the money it is your right to opt for better things. When state education starts to deteriorate, private education becomes attractive even to those that cannot objectively afford it. Parents start going to great lengths to provide the best for their children, even if this means lowering one’s standard of living.

Having to wait for years to undergo a hip replacement operation due to the long, unending and ominous waiting list at Mater Dei, leaves you with a Hobson’s choice: wait until your turn comes, praying that until then, you will not need to make two hip replacements… unless of course you have the money. In that case, a similar operation is only days away.

I have known people borrowing money from their next of kin in order to undergo an operation in a private hospital after having been discouraged by the system to do it free of charge at Mater Dei. For many people, matters of health come before financial priorities and are ready to part with all they have in order to lead a better life, notwithstanding that in theory the cure and the care is available free of charge.

Take the case of the pensioner, who has now become accustomed to purchasing his so vital medicine from the pharmacy round the corner. He has lost hope to ever getting it free of charge from the government pharmacy. Each and every time he requests it, he is told that it is out of stock. A phrase which has become much more common than “full up!”.

For those who live on miserly pension of something less than €460 a month, it’s a damning phrase, because along with other causes which are eroding at their pension, they are truly struggling to make ends meet up to the end of the month. Now you may realize that in these circumstances, there are two persons that are making a gain. On the one hand, there are the politicians in government, who while reneging  on their obligations towards the taxpayer are at the same time reducing public expenditure.

On the other hand, you have the private organizations that are making a gain by becoming more attractive due to the deficiencies and shortcomings of the public institutions.

We are facing a socio-economic scenario where the public services are shrinking and failing to deliver what has already been paid during a person's lifetime. Consequently people are, against their will, being herded to seek private services because they cannot do otherwise.  

What worries me is, whether all this is being done with the connivance of all the parties in the market. Or could these be imperfections and distortions that have been brought about inadvertently due to pure administrative mismanagement and lack of long term planning? I believe it's a mixture of both.