What Can't Wait

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here. 

It was supposed to be a routine check-up. After hearing about the recent falls, however, the family physician strongly recommended that my beloved send his mother for x-rays, blood tests, the works, and so we found ourselves in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati two days before Christmas. Then we found out that if she went directly from the hospital into physical therapy, Medicare would pay for it, but if she went home from the hospital to celebrate Christmas with her family in her own home, and to attend her grandson's wedding reception, Medicare would not pay.

Money is an unavoidable issue for many families at this time of the year. The costs to families who have loved ones incarcerated in the USA rise during the holiday season as they make more visits, send more care packages, and make more phone calls. Even emails come at a price. A set of 30 digital stamps, required by correctional facilities, costs $12. In Singapore, where prisons are not yet privatized but where the state controls everyone's retirement funds, a woman was driven to attempt suicide in order to release her monies for her children. Unable to work because of an autoimmune disease, she had tried everything else, friends, family, her MP, social services. The relevant Ministry is now looking into her case, but why is such desperation necessary to get attention?

Fortunate in being able to afford the physical therapy for my beloved's mom, we took her home to celebrate Christmas, but the unexpected question puts in mind the many people in both countries who cannot afford the costs of celebrating this season. This should not be the way. This does not need to be the way. If democracy is essentially about self-government, shouldn't all of us living in supposedly democratic states have more control over our own fates?

Jee Leong Koh
December 26, 2019

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