One of the catch-phrases of 1960s political activism was “the personal is political.” When you’re a political scientist, this is certainly true. Facebook reminded me of this recently when it showed me memories of our vacation last year. I wrote this post last year, but never posted it; the pictures in my feed reminded me of this incident, so I thought I’d resurrect it. In July 2017, in the midst of a record breaking heat wave across Europe and Africa (just like this year!), I had the pleasure of visiting Morocco with my family. While we were there, temperatures topped out at 46 C in Fez – or 115 degrees for those of us here in the US.
But this isn’t a personal-political post about climate change. No, this post is about health care. Because while we were enjoying that stifling heat in Morocco, my son managed to fall out of his bunk bed in the middle of a night of listless sleep, breaking his foot, necessitating a visit to an emergency room in Chefchaouen, Morocco. Where you might ask? Exactly – we were in a small, back-packing town in the middle of nowhere Morocco.
While this is pretty much every traveler’s nightmare, we had two things going for us—both of which are the focus of this post. First, I cannot say enough positive things about the U.S. State Department and the people who work at Moroccan embassy. I speak passable college French (for someone who finished college many, many years ago) which is the most common second language in Morocco, but in no way am I fluent. During our ordeal, the U.S. embassy in Morocco was a life line. I called the emergency line for American citizens in the middle of the night, and the woman who answered stuck with us through night, translating when needed. When she went off duty, she handed us over to the woman on day duty, who called to check in on us and provide translation services for us.
It’s become in vogue in some circles to disparage the State Department. President Trump proposed a nearly 33% cut to the State Department’s budget for this fiscal year last fall, no doubt in some effort to get rid of the “deep state” that so many on the right like to opine about. Thankfully, Congress overrode this proposal. While I won’t disagree that the State Department could use some reform and streamlining, I think it’s easy to forget that the State Department provides essential service for many Americans at home and abroad. It is comprised of many personnel (several of whom we interacted with) who do their best, day in and day out, to support ordinary American citizens like us when they run into trouble abroad. I don’t know how we would have made it through without them, and for that, I am so grateful. And angry on their behalf—they don’t deserve to be disparaged the way they are.
Second, our entire interaction with the Moroccan health care system cost us a whopping $30. Yes—that’s right, all medical services for a broken foot for just $30. That’s because, despite the fact that Morocco is by no means a wealthy nation, they provide basic health care, including emergency services, for free. We spent $12 to upgrade the plaster for my son’s cast and $18 on a pair of crutches. Yes, there was some waiting involved (no more so than we might have waited in a US emergency room), and the conditions in the hospital were less than optimal, but the care we received was spot on, confirmed by a visit to our doctor when we returned back home.
When I fearfully asked the receptionist at the hospital how much this was going to cost (envisioning making panicked visits with various credit cards to ATMs around town), he replied, “This is an emergency. We are here for emergencies, so this costs nothing.” I almost wept. How is it that a country like Morocco, which has a far less developed economy than ours, can provide these sorts of services for all its citizens, yet here in the US, we cannot figure out how to do the same?
I know that there are those who do not believe that we ought to guarantee health care to everyone, but when I looked around me, I saw a grandmother with a severely broken leg, an older man with an eye injury, and several people suffering from heat stroke. All of them were receiving health care, without worrying about how this would affect their lives. Given that health care costs are one of the leading causes of bankruptcy in the US, I can’t help but wonder why we can’t provide the same sense of assurances to our own citizens.