My Life in Venezuela: Care at New Public Clinics

justinaforjustice

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Wed Aug-15-07 08:20 PM
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My Life in Venezuela: Care at New Public Clinics

Although I've longed worked as a lawyer in the U.S., for the last five years I haven't had any medical insurance. Why?

I couldn't manage to pay for it and make a hefty mortgage payment and put a child through college, even a state college. Something had to go, so I gave up the insurance with a prayer that I wouldn't get sick. I was lucky, I didn't get sick. Many people in the same situation aren't so fortunate.

In February of this year, I retired from law to begin a new, less stressful career, that of teaching English as a foreign language. I choose to come to Venezuela to teach because I wanted to see at first hand what the "Bolivarian Revolution" was all about.

I've been here for eight months, and what I've seen here has impressed me. One area in which Venezuela has seen enormous success is in the provision of health care to its citizens.

I've had occasion to need to see a doctor on two occasions since moving here. My first visit to the free medical clinic, Barrio El Dentro, located in a freshly painted old colonial hospital building in Merida, came about because I had run out of a medication proscribed in the Hawaii and needed a new prescription.

I had learned about Barrio El Dentro after touring the clinic last year with the Global Exchange program the previous year, and had been impressed with its cleanliness, modern equipment and the wide range of services it provided, including acupuncture and even aromatherapy.

As a foreigner, I was initially reluctant to burden the El Barrio clinic with my minor needs, but after trying without success to locate an English-speaking private doctor, I went to the Barrio El Dentro clinic where, after a 5 minute wait, my blood pressure was tested by the nurse and then I was shown into the office of a young Venezuelan doctor who spoke fluent English.

After a ten minute chat about my drug needs and medical history, then on how he came to learn English and how I came to Venezuela, I left the clinic with my needed prescription. The charge? Nada (none).

My second visit to the clinic a few months later was occasioned by a dizzy spell. After a ten minute wait, I was tested by the nurse and then shown into the office of a lovely, cheerful female Venezuelan doctor who did not speak English.

Somehow, with my poor Spanish, I managed to answer her questions about my symptoms. She ordered a blood test at the clinic's laboratory for the next morning, telling me to return in the afternoon to see her.

At seven o'clock the next morning, I arrived at the clinic to find a line of folks waiting for tests but, after about a half an hour, my blood was taken and off I went. The charge? Nada.

When I returned that afternoon, after being duly tested by the nurse, the same doctor reviewed all of the tests with me, which were thankfully normal, questioned me further about symptoms, examined me and then wrote out a prescription.

We then chatted for another five minutes about her need for English in using the computer and my need to improve my Spanish. It was extremely friendly and relaxed, very unlike all the rushing around that was a doctor's life at Kaiser. The charge? Nada.

Was I happy with the service? You bet, especially as I hadn't been left naked and freezing in a treatment room for ages with only a paper doily on, as was par for the course at Kaiser.

And I didn't have to pay out thousands of dollars in insurance, not even any co-payments. That was a shock to my Americanized system, but I managed to gratefully survive the shock!

Today I had a conversation with one of my students, a thirty year old married woman who works as a graphic designer for a major Christian religious group. She and her statistician husband are preparing for a trip to the U.S. where they will be working temporarily with another church group in the mid west.

This woman is very much involved in her religious group and is by no means political, but she told me that before Chavez was elected, the medical system in Venezuela was just awful. There were very long waiting lines at the private clinics, the services were poor, the places were dirty and ambulances virtually non-existent. For poor people, there was virtually no access to medical or dental care at all.

Now she goes to the local public clinic near her home and is highly satisfied with their no fee services, which include medications. She mentioned that a friend has a heart condition that requires a thousand dollars worth of medication a month, but he now gets all his medication with no charge at the clinic.

She told me that since 1998, the medical services in private clinics have improved as well, apparently the new public clinics have set the standards that the private clinics are now emulating.

The American economy generates more than enough money to pay for good medical services for all its citizens. This is a Constitutional Right here in Venezuela. We must make it a a legal right in the U.S. as well and not accept anything less that fully free medicine and drugs.

If Venezuela can do it, so can we!

I might add that Dennis Kucinich is the only presidential candidate with a universal government-funded health care plan. If we can get Dennis elected, the U.S. will have a health care program that covers everyone, with no "profits" getting siphoned off to insurance companies. Why should we accept less?