Page 13 - Issue 14

In the United States, the wealthiest country on the
planet, doctors are currently scrambling to obtain
face masks to protect themselves (The New York
Times has reported that paramedic workers are
improvising masks out of coffee filters).

In Israel in 2018, the ratio of hospital beds to
population was at its lowest level in three decades,
according to a Ministry of Health report: 1.78 per
thousand, down from 2.224 in 2000 and 2.68 in
1988 (in Germany it was 8.0).

Spectacular neglect

The successive governments of Benjamin
Netanyahu have spectacularly neglected the
health system. There are at least two reasons for
this: For one, Netanyahu is in his heart and soul a
neo-liberal who believes in the redistribution of
money from the public sector, via tax cuts and the
selling-off of public assets to private interests. At
the same time, he has channeled precious public
resources to population groups that support him
at the polls, contributing to massive shortages in
the health care system.

The massive depletion of the public sector
budgets are visible for all to see: Israel has the
lowest levels of unemployment benefits in the
industrial world. Behind the mixture of drastic
measures and amateurism with which the corona
crisis has been managed in Israel is a health care
system that has been sorely neglected.