HI Noemi,
Im just having a browse through some edgeryders articles and came across your post from last year. Couldn’t leave without saying how much your stories moved me. Its so interesting to read about a corrupt and failing system. Im sorry to hear that your people, family and friends have to suffer through it and live with the ever lingering anxiety of how to provide healthcare for the elderly and ageing population. It’s amazing to realise how different the structure is here in the UK where healthcare and social support is free for all. I have often been critical about the impact of free healthcare on the complacency of families to neglect and dismiss their elders to the care of the state, often with huge and high expectations of what the state can and should provide. I think it has contributed to a fractured family structure in society with sometimes little care and responsibility of families to look after their loved ones. There is an enormous financial burden that is placed on the NHS with the ageing population, to have them pick up the bill for every person in a care home is unsustainable and to some degree unfair on the system itself.
Reading this however, I can appreciate a little more the enormous pressures that is put on family and friends when this support does not exist. It is inspiring to hear of people such as Vlad Voiculescu who come into support others in an otherwise neglected area. There is amazing potential for the redistribution of wealth (and wealth in health care provisions). The money is out there and the provisions most definitely are as well, they are just not spread evenly!!
As always we may hope on a middle ground, with services available for the elderly, looking after their specific health care needs. But I would hope that family involvement would always be encouraged and part of a sustainable system. Even within a globalised world we still hope for community. 