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Starving 80 year-old: "It's good that the communists didn't win the elections!"

22. 7. 2010 / Jan Čulík

During a recent visit to the South Bohemian region I asked around some locals about their situation. I am not sure about the young, but the elderly are mostly doing pretty bad over there. Their pensions don't go up much, on the other hand, their rent does. The result is that many retired senior citizens are left with only a few hundred Czech crowns per month to buy food. There are ladies over 80 years of age who can only allow themselves to buy potatoes.

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Many have also stopped going to the doctor. If you have a pension of 9000 crowns, but you pay 7500 in rent, then it isn't very easy to survive with the rest. And that absurdly small fee of 30 crowns, which nowadays one has to pay to see a doctor or buy medicine, is way too much for someone living out of their retirement pensions.

Southern Bohemian doctors, however, at meetings with the public openly take pleasure at the fact that, after the introduction of the 30 crown fee, "simulators and hypocondriacs" disappeared from their clinics. They are certainly adding to that count those old people, even though it is exactly the elderly the ones in more need of medical assistance. But because they can't afford it, they end up not being able to go see a doctor when they need.

And why those starving and ailing senior citizens without free health assistance didn't choose some political party that would defend their interests to vote for, or, if no such party exists, why one wasn't created? The British press constantly shows how, as the amount of senior citizens goes up, they will become a huge political and economic force, politicians will have to count with their support.

When will Czech senior citizens realize that because they are so many, and there will be more and more, they can be influential in Czech society and that they should organize themselves to fight together for their interests?

Probably they won't, as a category, ever realize that. As one of those starving elderly ladies, who can only buy a couple of potatoes to eat: "It's good, isn't it, that the communists didn't win the elections!"

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Obsah vydání | Pondělí 2.8. 2010