In a recent newsletter Democratic Alliance leader, Helen Zille, condemned the lack of attention paid by the State since 1994 to improving the plight of our society's deaf and partially-deaf, citing how this neglect serves as "Just another example of the difference between high flown ideology and reality", and marks a failure to uphold a "Constitutional Duty" (see here). The sentiment is wholly justified - recent efforts to have sign language recognised as an examinable Matric subject stand testament to this - but her argument quickly devolves into one which is blighted by the very aloofness, hypocrisy and disregard for the Constitution she so liberally dolls upon the State.
Rather than focusing on how our ailing public health care system fails people with a variety of ailments on a daily basis, and how broader reform needs to take place, she asks whether it is right for Government to provide care to people with "personal lifestyle choices ranging from unprotected sex, to alcohol and drug abuse", over those who have "no choice over their medical conditions". There are a number of major flaws in this argument.
First and most superficially, is the issue of how the public health care system - and indeed society at large - might design the criteria by which to determine who deserves care, and who does not. Zille singles out unprotected sex as an adverse lifestyle choice which is surely true, but what about the eating habits of people in South Africa (the Western Cape in particular) and the consequent spiralling rate of obesity which directly leads to Diabetes (Type 2), Hypertension, Coronary Heart Disease and even certain forms of Cancer?
We in the Western Cape are vehemently proud of our sporting heritage and none more so than rugby - a contact sport which often leads to injuries of varying severity. Should people with medical conditions emerging from these two scenarios be refused treatment because their ailments originated in risky behaviour? And what of those who smoke cigarettes, those who don't look after their teeth, those who don't wear sun screen, those who drive without a seat belt, etc? Is there one amongst us who is not guilty of such actions and if so, is Zille condemning us to a hospital door being shut in our faces?
The relatively wealthy will have little to worry about - they will continue to have their health problems, self-inflicted or otherwise, seen to in the private health care sector. It is only the poor who will suffer the consequences of their "irresponsibility".
Secondly, Zille cites South Africa's limited financial resources to question whether we should be treating certain ailments arising from poor lifestyle-choices, when in fact the question should be whether we can afford not to provide care.