Free medicine for the 'poor' and social justice

I am a worker.

I do not give services and then not give fiscal receipts. I do not have a full-time job which I abandon half way through the morning to do undeclared part-time work. I do my best not to shirk my work. I do not escape doing my full duty by hiding behind a tangle of red tape. I did not shirk my studies when younger for the sake of an early, menial job that yielded little pay and no prospects. I do not work in companies that generate no gain and are subsidised by taxes.

I work hard to earn what I do earn. I am not rich. I have inherited no money, nor was I ever given or won any. My work yields a reasonable pay that has placed me and my family in the lower levels of middle class. I give my dues to the state by declaring every cent of my income and paying quite a large sum in income tax. Half jokingly I say that I too am an employer because I have no doubt that my taxes pay at least the salary of one worker in the lower echelons of state employment.

I have been provoked into writing this by the following paragraph in Bishop Nikol Cauchi's Talking Point (January 7):

"It is surely no more than a rhetorical question to ask whether medicine or other health services should be given for free to those that can easily afford to pay for it. Free services should be reserved for low income families who have no other choice."

This has also been the cry of the ministers for health and finance since the last budget. Means testing will be introduced with the intention of curbing "rampant abuse" and making the health system more "manageable". The Nationalist Party's media machine has splashed with bright colours how people earning more than Lm10,000 a year (yes, very rich indeed in today's society, and within the context of the EU of which we are now members), actually get even paracetamol for free. Yes, that is abuse! Shame indeed on a system that allows people with such an income to get away with taking free pills worth a few cents! I wonder how the yellow card filtering system was duped for this to be allowed to happen!

But what about the diabetics? What about the chronic asthmatics (like myself)? What about the hypertensives? And so many others who are chronically ill and whose income is above the cut-off line to be determined by the government in its verve to cut costs and save money then to be spent on the interminable new hospital and other cash-grinding endeavours?

The medicines taken by people with these conditions cost way more than paracetamol... sometimes running into hundreds of liri every month. If their right for free medicine is taken away, they and their families will fall on hard times indeed, drastically reducing the quality of their lifestyle... while, of course, they will still continue paying in full the taxes needed for that other worker's salary, whose medicine (including, I presume, paracetamol) will remain free.

I challenge anyone to tell me that this is social justice... that much flaunted phrase that in Malta has been overzealously used by both the major parties (and, as I infer from Bishop Cauchi's article, the Church) and that have reduced its definition simplistically to the basic Robin Hood philosophy of stealing from the "rich" to give to the "poor".

Yes, by all means, let us find the money necessary to help those with a low income. But please do not do it to the detriment of those other workers who have earned their right to a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. If social justice is to prevail, then it must prevail across the board. As is the case in the Scandinavian countries and others, welfare helps all equally, while making further concessions for those who are more in need.

The much maligned, over-taxed middle class in Malta has been for quite a few years the only source of income for cash- strapped governments formed by both the major parties. It seems there is neither the vision nor the will to find better ways of managing public income and the middle class the only milkable cow. It is also a cow that does not often cry out in pain at being milked dry, for fear of appearing to be antisocial, against social justice, against subsidiarity, against the better interests of the working class and so on... we have all heard the slogans bandied about and reiterated by media machines that believe in brow-beating victimised workers into silence! I have no doubt those same machines will be set in motion in reaction to this article and I shall be branded reactionary and an abomination to the concept of social justice.

All I say is that it is about time we question terms like "social justice" as rebranded by our politicians. We might find that they are often being used to hide a lack of political vision and simple ability to determine a way forward. The case of free medicine for the "poor" is most definitely a case in point.