Bathroom Birth & Inflation Offset: Chile Delivers

This week Chile's government apologized after a Peruvian woman couldn't hold it any longer and had to give birth in hospital bathroom, and Bachelet announced a relief package going to poorer Chileans to offset inflation, all of 45 bucks per family.

This is all very personal to me. I didn't realize the atrocious state of Chile's public hospitals, nor how dear a few dozen dollars are, until I got bit by a dog in Providencia, Santiago.

It was a couple years ago, I was walking on a sidewalk completely unaware that two kids and their chain-leashed mutt were proceeding on foot out of a private driveway hidden by one of those hateful Providencia hedge-rows.

A sharp, powerful stinging sensation on my left calf first clued me in to their presence, and was quickly followed by the dog's rapid-fire barking (as well as the sound of my own cursing).

Their mother brought out the iodine, my wound looked more like a ruddy scrape than anything, there was no missing flesh or dangling tendons, no sparkling tunnel vision brought on by severe blood loss.

Nevertheless I figured a check-up would make sense. She told me she wouldn't pay for me to go to a private clinic, but rather I'd have to go to a free public hospital (way to buck up, dog-owner).

I didn't know better, and so I actually went to the public hospital.

In the cement-floored waiting room, there were no lights on, but the afternoon sun poured in through huge bay windows, as well as the doors that were left open to provide relief from the sweltering heat.

These doors opened directly onto a parking lot. I could hear the popping sound of tires rolling over gravel and broken asphalt. This outside sound mixed together with inside sounds: distorted blaring from a lone TV monitor, babies crying and families, both poor and Peruvian, murmuring fearfully as they squished together on cracked, plastic airport seats lined up in rigid rows through the center of the room.

The receptionist, boxed off in a cube of Plexiglas, told me she had no idea how long I would wait, and honestly probably wouldn't get seen at all that day, considering my condition wasn't urgent.

(Not that urgent cases are always attended either, of course).

To the right of the receptionist's cube, a door swinged open occasionally to let stretchers or masked surgeons through. Peering beyond this door, I could see nothing but pure darkness.

I left.

Eventually, I dropped 40 bucks on a private clinic. It was clean, well lit, and comfortable. The doctor gave me the assurance I needed that I would be fine. Call it excessive, or prudent, but I think I was well within my bounds.

So I was irked, but not surprised, when the dog-owner flatly refused my request for reimbursement. In her mind the public hospital was somehow a viable option that I was free to avail myself of. When I told her "not really" she began screaming and hanged up. I think at a certain point she explained that 40 bucks was way outside of her tax bracket or something.

Somehow, of course, that doesn't explain how she pays for dog food.

Luckily for me, though, it was only 40 bucks.

But while her unwillingness to pay displays a craven lack of personal responsibility, it also speaks to her economic poverty, and that of Chile's so-called "middle class".

Put it this way: 40 bucks doesn't go that far in Santiago, but it's hard to come by. So to help offset inflation in Chile, President Michelle Bachelet is handing out 45 bucks per family. Assuming that means a family-of-four, that's under 12 bucks per person. One time only.

Call me a persistent pessimist, call me crazy, but I just can't get excited about this supposed boon to Chile's poorest. Bachelet has a history of half-assed gestures that do nothing to address the underlying class inequality in Chile, fundamental problems of human capital development and upward mobility seem to be hardly a priority.

Instead, she employs brazen, if heavily watered-down populism to boost her own popularity.

Last year she raised the minimum wage by approximately 16 cents per hour. This year she launched a shameful Ethical Wage dog-and-pony show. A couple weeks ago she padded poor peoples' retirement pensions barely squeeking them in over Chile's artificially low poverty line, soon she'll boast a virtual elimination of poverty, she's made equally ridiculous claims before.

Yes, strictly speaking, it is progress. But is it really better than nothing? I'd argue that it's worse. Token, bare-minimum gestures like these help take pressure off the president, yet preserve the status quo. Chile has the best economy in South America, but wealth distribution is the worst in the world.