SOCIALIST UNITY

Shadow work and pensions secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC: “This is not welfare reform… it is simply benefit cuts. None of these proposals will get single extra person back into jobs.”

She said the Labour government had already outlined plans to save £1.5bn on sickness benefits through its own test - the work capability assessment.

She said she was concerned that “they might be ripping that up and just going for arbitrary targets to cut spending instead of actually a sensible process, driven by medical evidence, to try and get as many people as possible back to work”.

She accused the government of a “slash and burn approach” to benefits - including plans to cap housing benefit - which could actually end up costing more in the long run, by increasing unemployment and homelessness.

“I don’t understand why the Liberal Democrats have signed up to something which is actually a return to the Thatcherite 80s.”

As part of my continuing attempt to prove that in thirteen years of government New Labour has not done one progressive thing on the economic front, I should like to draw your attention to the following damning piece of analysis by the Left Economics Advisory Panel:

“Looking at comparative statistics though between the ILO unemployment measure and the claimant count (those actually receiving jobseeker’s allowance or unemployment benefit as it was) in the mid-80s, early 90s and now reveals how much New Labour’s ‘welfare reforms’ have kept people from successfully claiming.

“While it is true that unemployment (on the ILO measure) is currently about half a million lower than in the previous two recessions (2.5m rather than 3m) it is revealing to know what percentage of those deemed unemployed under the ILO measure are receiving unemployment benefits.

“In the mid-80s it was 94%, in the early 90s it was 97%, today it is just 65%. So in effect there are today over 800,000 who are unemployed who - for whatever reason - are not claiming jobseeker’s allowance.

“While New Labour should be pleased that unemployment has not (yet) hit the heights it did in previous recessions, it should be intensely concerned at the missing 800,000.” (Emphasis added.)

I can only hope that the last sentence above is meant to be an attempt at humour. Although admittedly LEAP does not go so far as to actually state that New Labour has intentionally designed its “reforms” to ensure fewer successful claims, no fair-minded person could possibly come to any other conclusion.

Incidentally, imagine if David Cameron could tear himself away from choosing the new curtains for Downing Street, concentrate instead on policy rather than gimmicky posters which have a tendency to backfire, then no later than June of this year New Labour would decompose into the equivalent of the Ulster Unionist Party. Weeks away from a general election, the UK still does not have an effective opposition. Lucky as it’s been, and in many ways still is, the luckiest political party in British electoral history is about to see its luck run out. Good riddance, New Labour.

News that the government is considering a proposal to reward those who inform on benefit cheats is evidence of the recession being used to justify the passing of regressive legislation, designed to punish the symptoms of inequality instead of address the cause – namely the elevation of greed to the status of virtue and the continued denial of the corrosive impact this has had and continues to have on society.

It was in 1987 that Thatcher made her now infamous statement that ‘there is no such thing as society’. However, in order to truly grasp the enormity of this sentiment, and how it has shaped British society since under both the Tory government of John Major and 13 years of New Labour thereafter, it is important to look at the entire passage in which the quote was contained. Given during an interview to Woman’s Own magazine, the then prime minister said:

“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”

It was an ethos of individualism and Social Darwinism crafted to suit the free market model of unfettered capitalism, and there’s no doubt that Thatcher only felt secure enough to articulate such a brutal philosophy in the aftermath of a protracted war with the unions in which she and the class interests she represented emerged victorious.

Thatcher was deposed by her own in 1990 when it became obvious that her direct and overt approach to the working class was much too crude to guarantee the stability which capitalism requires in order to function optimally. The Tories inexplicably managed to win the election in 1994 with John Major at the helm, but by 1997 Major’s government was riven with splits and internecine feuds, thus setting the stage for a fresh start for capital with Tony Blair and New Labour.

The change represented by New Labour was merely a change in form and not in content. Free Market capitalism remained the only game in town as far as Blair and his cabinet of converted socialists and progressives were concerned. Adopting the ideology of Third Way triangulation to provide intellectual foundation, or, to be more accurate, smokescreen, to the continuation of the transfer of wealth from rich to poor begun under Thatcher, the result after ten years in office was a level of inequality in Britain that hadn’t been seen since the end of the 19th century.

Equality of opportunity rather than material equality marked a simple change of formulation on paper, but in the context of the guiding principle of Labourism since the Labour Party was formed in 1900, it was tantamount to Labour abandoning the working class and the poor in favour of the rich. For what is a belief in meritocracy under capitalism if not advocacy of the deserving rich at one end of the spectrum and the undeserving poor at the other?

Under the rubric of a social democracy which had lurched to the right in order to adapt to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the consequent advance of neoliberalism and finance capital around the globe, deregulation became a religion, packaged under social democracy as progressive reform, none more so in this country as the introduction of PFI and PPP.

Real wages continued to decline and be replaced by access to consumer credit for most working people, while for those who fell through the net and found themselves facing an existence of long hours on low wages, the benefits system came to be regarded as anathema by a government in thrall to the needs of employers for a low wage, casualised workforce.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, social attitudes to the benefits system have been conditioned through the passage of successive welfare reforms. Aided by the mainstream press the prevailing attitude now is that benefits for those out of work are no longer a right but a privilege, with moral degeneracy inferred as the common denominator of those in receipt.

The Welfare Reform Act, introduced by the government in 1999, was heralded as an end to the culture of dependency. Nothing of course was mentioned of the billions in handouts to the rich and big business in the form of subsidises, R & D grants, tax efficient investment schemes, capital gains, and export credit guarantees. The focus instead was on the poor and low wages - the undeserving poor. All benefit claimants under the new legislation were required to attend work-focused interviews, which in truth were designed to foment a culture of coercion in which claimants were pushed in many cases to the point of nervous breakdown to take any employment available, low wage or otherwise, regardless of previous experience, individual needs or long term prospects.

The second Welfare Reform Act under New Labour was passed in 2007. Its stated aim was a radical reduction in levels of worklessness among single parents, older people and those on Incapacity Benefit, with a target set of an 80 per cent employment rate among working age adults. The then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions responsible for pushing the new legislation through parliament was John Hutton, an ultra-Blairite moderniser, who as a student at Oxford was a member of the Conservative Association before later joining the Labour Party. What Hutton, his successor Hain, and later James Purnell, all had in common was an attachment to the coercive measures on welfare encompassed in the report compiled by investment banker Sir David Freud in 2007. Interestingly, this former adviser to the government on welfare reform later resigned to take up a position as a Conservative frontbench spokesman. Freud’s review outlined a far greater role for the private and voluntary sectors in ‘helping claimants back to work’ than previously envisaged, along with greater emphasis on benefits coming attached with responsibilities rather than being granted as a right.

The most radical measures on welfare reform thus far were mooted by James Purnell, who held the office of Work and Pensions Secretary from 2008 to 2009 before resigning in an attempt to bring down Gordon Brown’s leadership in the wake of the expenses scandal. Outlining plans for a new Welfare Reform Bill in 2008, Purnell advocated paying private firms to get people into work and a scheme in which those who were unemployed for a year would be required to do four weeks full time voluntary work of some sort in order on pain of having their benefits cut. Meanwhile, people in receipt of Incapacity Benefit would be expected to attend job interviews. The Conservatives have already announced that they will support the proposed reforms, which are expected to come before parliament sometime in late 2010-early 2011.

Overall, this structural shift in attitude towards welfare under New Labour can only be seen as a continuation of Thatcher’s assault on the poor. It has been combined with a concerted propaganda campaign in the media targeting benefit cheats, which effectively stigmatises all who claim benefits, regardless of personal circumstances.

Of course, where possible meaningful employment is always a better option than benefits. And those who make fraudulent claims are guilty of stealing from the taxpayer. But in light of the individualistic, greed-is-good ethos which has dominated society ever since Thatcher came to power, and where the pursuit of inordinate wealth and luxury has become inextricably associated with human happiness, so-called benefit cheats constitute a drop in the ocean compared to the damage done to the economy and social cohesion by the rich and a government which governs on their behalf.

For progressives the focus must be on tackling the issue of poverty at the root, which means in the midst of a recession pushing for significant investment in the real economy to create employment that comes with a living wage. After all, the money to pay for such investment is readily available.

Tax the rich.

by Tony Greenstein

Having already abolished Incapacity Benefit, New Labour has now made it clear that it wants to scrap ALL disability benefits.

On July 14th New Labour published a Green Paper, Shaping the Future of Care. Reading through the spin, the message is clear. DLA is ‘inefficient’ ‘poorly targeted’ [because it’s not means tested!] and therefore has to go towards paying for a new national care service.

DLA is the best benefit there is. If your needs are great enough, if you cannot care and need help with bodily functions for part or all of the day (and night) you are eligible for DLA. There are 3 bands – lower, middle and higher. Receipt of DLA does not overlap with other benefits and is not counted as taxable income. The result is that people who are the most vulnerable and sick in this society see a small increase in their standard of living.

This is what New Labour hate most of all.

The proposal is to use the money for ‘individual budgets’ run by private companies, whereby the disabled, in agreement with the local authority, can spend the money on care. Of course they’ll never actually see the money!! The whole system will be discretionary and, of course, liable to cuts. Anyone with any experience of the existing system of individual budgets knows what a nightmare the whole system is.

The Green Paper talks about abolishing Attendance Allowance which is paid to those 65 and over (AA is the equivalent of the care component of DLA). Instead they intend to force the elderly to pay £20,000 to insure themselves!! The Green Paper talks about replacing not just Attendance Allowance but ‘disability benefits’ - a clear sign that it is not just AA which is in their sights. And the Green Paper dresses up its purpose with the usual New Labour waffle such as proclaiming that “our aspiration (is) to build a stronger, fairer Britain.”

The Attlee Government of 1945-51, which was a right-wing cold war Labour government, introduced the building blocs of the welfare state which New Labour is intent on dismantling. They introduced the 1948 National Assistance Act intended to act as a safety net for those who fell below a certain level of income. Successive Labour and Tory Governments built on Attlee’s measures. E.g. DLA was introduced by the Major Government in 1992 New Labour has abolished Incapacity Benefit and all but scrapped Income Support. Those who propagate the idea that New Labour is ‘better’ than the Tories and base their strategy on that are deceiving themselves and others..

New Labour prefers a welfare state for bankers in distress, and their ‘benefits’ are paid via stuffing their mouths with gold, whilst expecting the poorest and most deprived sections of the community to pay for it. Meanwhile the leadership of the Trade Unions, like the three wise monkeys, hear nothing, see nothing and say nothing. And more to the point - do nothing.

DLA is used to pay for the extra costs that result from being disabled. For example my own son is autistic. One of the consequences of this is that he is always breaking things, including windows! DLA pays for this. It also enables him to be taken out by his parents, to enjoy videos and DVDs and live as near as possible a normal life including holidays. This is the kind of thing that New Labour is determined to prevent and in its place will be a free-market, semi-privatised, bureaucratically driven National Care Agency which will determine what the needs of the disabled are.

Disabled Charities Collaborate with Government
The disabled charity sector – Disability Alliance, Mencap and all the other charities who make a good living off the back of the disabled – are the Government’s first port of call. These so-called ‘representatives’ of the disabled, although no one has ever elected these middle-class worthies, most of whom are not disabled, to this role, are now rolling over to accept New Labour’s latest spin.

Their idea of a ‘campaign’ is to get people to take part in the Government’s ‘consultation exercise’. Now no one is suggesting that people boycott the consultation, but to make that the only part of your ‘campaign’ is to fool people into believing that any New Labour ‘consultation’ is actually a genuine exercise, rather than an attempt to convince those they are targetting that New Labour’s medicine will be good for them.

On 1st September Michelle Holland of the Disability Alliance wrote to me saying it was untrue that they supported the abolition of DLA and AA. She suggested writing to one’s MP and take part in the government consultation.

Ms Holland boasted that ‘We are members of the Disability Benefit Consortium… We meet regularly with the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs on a range of benefits related issues.’ Err quite and look where it’s got you.

On October 16th Ms Holland followed this up with another letter urging that I contact my MP and assuring me that ‘We are building as robust a defence of DLA and Attendance Allowance as possible and will be trying to demonstrate that.’ Which entirely misses the point that the government’s exercise is not conducted in good faith. The proposals for a national care system are designed to hide the fact that their main goal is the abolition of a benefit that costs over £10 billion a year. When you’ve got hungry bankers to feed, then it is clear what your priorities are.

I therefore wrote back to Ms Holland about her ‘campaign’ asking:

‘Where are the thousands of posters, the meetings, the town hall rallies, the leaflets to MPs securing firm commitments in the run-up to the General Election? Instead you prefer quiet words behind doors with those seeking to find the money to fund the public borrowing deficit incurred as a result of a welfare state that primarily caters today for Bankers and other parasites.

To be blunt your role is an absolute disgrace and since you intend to do nothing it’s about time that the spotlight was turned on people like you who purport to represent the disabled when in actual fact you do nothing but sell them out.’

In fact I had already written to my MP, and the Minister for Disabled, Jonathan Shaw wrote back thus in a letter of 12 October:

‘’Many people and charities, such as Disability Alliance, Mencap, Age Concern and Help the Aged have told us they welcome the chance to discuss and engage [i.e collaborate] with us on these important issues.’

The Fight is on to Save ALL Disability Benefits including Disability Living Allowance and Attendance Allowance (for the 65s and over).

There was an interesting debate today on BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show about the proposed centres for young parents. This had Erin Pizzey strongly supportive of the measure, and Jane James for the Socialist Party arguing against compulsion. They both made some good points, and Jane came over very well - compassionate and knowledgeable.

The debate followed Gordon Brown’s suggestion during his conference speech yesterday that 16 and 17 year old mothers in receipt of benefit would be required to be housed in communal “Foyers”. There is some confusion here because the Prime Minister said this would be instead of “giving them the keys to a council flat”, but my understanding is that the majority of teen mothers stay living with their own parents anyway; and the charity Gingerbread points out that council tenancies are currently only given to people over 18 years old, and mothers younger than that are already housed in sheltered accomodation.

But referring to the proposed homes as “Foyers” is a useful clarification of what they would be like; because this term is currently used for the sheltered hostels for young people coming out of homelessness - often run by housing associations, and providing a very positive and empowering experience for their clients.

Pizzey is a living paradox. She had a deeply unhappy childhood herself, abused by both her parents, and emotionally manipulated by her mother; and she has some real insight into the ofttimes co-dependent nature of abusers and abused; and how abused women sometimes try to place the emotional responsibility onto their children. But she also deeply, deeply hated her father, a violent cruel monster who terrorised and traumatised his family, to the point where Pizzey once almost killed him to defend her mother.

It was these experiences that led Pizzey to found the first women’s refuge in 1971, and pioneer an international movement to provide safety and security for women to flee abusive relationships. However, politically Pizzey is relatively conservative, and is opposed to feminism, which she regards as an ideology that perpetuates false stereotypes about men – and thus reinforces division and misunderstanding.

Erin Pizzey’s argument is essentially that society should not avoid responsibility for stemming the growing numbers of early teenage pregnancies from mothers (and fathers) who are barely children themselves; and that many of these young mothers do not have the skills, or family support to be good parents. Both of these propositions are undoubtedly true.

One of the callers into the programme was a woman, now in her fifties who had been placed in a Mother and Baby unit as a teenager back in 1976; and she said it was a very positive experience, with a sense of solidarity and help and support. It is an awesome responsibility to care for a new baby, and young parents should be supported by the state. Erin Pizzey talked of one teenage mother who couldn’t cook at all or cope on her own, and so invited other teenagers to share with her – a highly unsuitable environment for a baby; and she told of another young mother unable to cope who had turned to prostitution. I am sure there are many other disturbing examples.

Jane James agreed that such mother and baby units could be a good thing, but that young mothers could be allowed the choice whether or not to use such facilities if there was sufficient state support available for them to choose to live on their own – health visitors, social workers, etc. Jane also made the excellent point that fear, ignorance and stigmatisation mean that many young pregnant women leave it too late to tell anyone they are pregnant, and therefore have to go through with a birth even though they would prefer an abortion.

Better access to family planning advice, free contraception without questions being asked, a less moralistic social climate and greater self belief and hope for the future from teenage girls would be the best ways to counter unwanted teenage pregnancies. The test of the proposed Foyers would be whether they were developed in a context of stigmatisation, and moral panic; or whether they were genuinely empowering and supportive to give young mums independence, and the skills and aptitude for sucessful parenting. This is where the twin souls of Labour will be in competition - torn between a genuine desire for promoting equality and combatting poverty, but married to a failed and indefensible desire to promote social conformity through compulsion.

This is not an easy question. Anyone who works in Early Years will tell you how all too many pre-school children really are woefully failed by their parents, and thus by society. Children who themselves are unhappy, with low self-worth and culturally impoverished are not prepared for parenthood – and this is a typical profile for many a teenage pregnancy.

Anyone who is a parent will know how phenomenally challenging it is, especially to deal with the life change of having a baby in your life, and acquiring the complex skills necessary. It is also extremely hard to maintain your social connections with other friends who are not parents themselves, which can lead to young parents in particular being vulnerable and isolated.

It is not self-evidently wrong to ensure that teenage parents who do not have adequate family support should benefit from the collective solidarity of a supervised Mother and Baby home that will provide them with the practical skills, and help, necessary to start life as a parent. It is not self-evidently wrong for society to regard welfare entitlement as a social contract, so that teenage parents on benefit should be required to take the support that is available, rather than struggle without help, to the detriment of themselves and their child.

There is a genuine social problem here, and Gordon Brown’s proposal may be slightly ill-judged, but it is not monstrous. It will be broadly popular amongst most people; which means that those who oppose this need to couch their arguments in terms that recognise that there is a social problem; and engage with practical alternative proposals.

More on this from Grace Fletcher-Hackwood and David Semple

Here is a very unexceptional occurence in the US health system, which takes the breath away.

Friday, March 30, 2007
San Francisco General Hospital is the only trauma center …David Lazarus

There are 47 million people in this country without health insurance. Richmond resident Joey Palmer is one of them.He learned how costly this can be after fracturing a rib in a relatively minor motorcycle accident and subsequently being hit with a bill for more than $12,000 from San Francisco General Hospital.

“There’s no way I could pay something like that,” Palmer, 32, told me. “I’m not a bum, but I’m not making a lot of money right now. How is anyone supposed to pay a bill like that?”

Iman Nazeeri-Simmons, director of administrative operations at San Francisco General, said she sympathizes with Palmer’s situation.”It’s not us,” she said. “It’s the whole system, and the system is broken. We need to look closely at making changes and at how we can deliver care in a rational way.”

Palmer’s story illustrates the broader problem of runaway health care costs in the United States and a system that leaves millions of Americans to fend for themselves.It also underlines the importance of universal coverage that guarantees affordable health care to anyone, anywhere — a goal that’s become a central issue in California and in the current presidential campaign.

“We are the only developed country that doesn’t cover all its people,” said Stan Dorn, a senior research associate at the nonpartisan Urban Institute. “We also spend a lot more than the rest of the developed world.”

The United States spent an average of $6,102 per person on health care in 2004 (the latest year for which figures are available), according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Canada spent $3,165 per person, France $3,159, Australia $3,120 and Britain a mere $2,508. At the same time, life expectancy in the United States was lower than in each of these other countries and infant mortality was higher. But those are just statistics. When you talk about America’s health care crisis, you’re really talking about people. And Palmer’s experience speaks volumes. He was riding his motorcycle through San Francisco’s Presidio on Sept. 19. It was late afternoon. Palmer was heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge and then home to Richmond. Suddenly his brakes locked, sending the motorcycle into a slide. Palmer slammed into a guardrail. He was pretty shaken up, but he could tell he wasn’t badly hurt. A passer-by saw the accident and called for help. An ambulance arrived within minutes. Palmer said he told the paramedics that his ribs felt banged up, possibly broken, but that he was basically OK. He said he preferred to be treated in Contra Costa County, where he lives and would probably qualify for reduced hospital rates because of his income level.

Palmer is a woodworker who specializes in the decorative touches on wealthy people’s yachts. He said he made only about $7,500 last year, getting by primarily with the assistance of relatives. Palmer said the paramedics were concerned that he may have sustained internal injuries and insisted that he be treated immediately at a hospital. So he was driven by ambulance to San Francisco General, the only trauma center in the city.

Palmer got lucky here. The ambulance was from the Presidio Fire Department, which is run by the federal government and doesn’t charge for ambulance service. Had the trip been made by a private ambulance company, it likely would have cost Palmer between $700 and $1,000. On the other hand, what Palmer didn’t know is that as soon as the paramedics radioed ahead to say they were bringing in an accident victim, San Francisco General, as per the hospital’s procedures, issued a trauma alert to its staff.

Basically, that means a page was sent to doctors and anesthesiologists on call at the time. That page alone cost Palmer $4,659, and he hadn’t even set foot yet inside the hospital. The actual hospital experience was, to put it mildly, a nightmare. After blood was drawn for a variety of tests (the cheapest of which cost $44 and the priciest $107), some X-rays were taken ($423).

Then, Palmer said, he was left in a room ($2,070) with a junkie “who was having a real bad trip.” He asked to be moved elsewhere but was told no other rooms were available. So Palmer ended up on a gurney in the hallway. And he waited there for five hours.Palmer’s bill indicates that he was twice given Vicodin ($22) to ease his pain during this interval, but he insists he took no medication.

“I finally saw someone and asked if I could check myself out,” he said. “The guy said they were still waiting for the results of my CT scans. I said that I hadn’t had any CT scans. It turns out they forgot to put me on the list.” So Palmer was put on the list for CT scans. And he waited another hour.At last the CT scans were taken ($3,334) and then another round of X-rays because, Palmer said, the first batch apparently hadn’t been done correctly.”

Finally a doctor came to me — it’s now almost 2 in the morning — and said, yes, I had a fractured rib and some bruised muscles,” Palmer recalled. “That was that. End of conversation.” Shortly afterward, he said, a clerical staffer approached with discharge papers for Palmer to sign.” She asked how I intended to pay for everything,” Palmer said. “I told her I didn’t have any insurance. She looked at me and then asked if there was anyone I could sue.”Several weeks later, he received a bill for $11,082 in hospital charges and a separate bill for $922 in doctors’ fees.

Palmer’s hospital visit was expensive and time consuming, but it wasn’t unique. Many people could cite similar (and similarly costly) experiences in receiving “emergency” medical care at U.S. facilities. “We view health care as a chance to make as much money as you can,” said Dorn at the Urban Institute. “The goal of health care should be improving people’s health.”

San Francisco General’s Nazeeri-Simmons was unable to comment on Palmer’s lengthy hospital stay because she didn’t have access to his medical records. But with Palmer’s permission, she was able to examine his billing file. “These charges are comparable to the entire health care market,” Nazeeri-Simmons said. “They aren’t out of line with what other hospitals are charging. They’re actually lower.”Not always. Trauma activation charges, for example, typically range from about $2,000 at some Bay Area hospitals to $7,000. At Marin General Hospital, the charge can run as high as $12,636.Nazeeri-Simmons said a sliding scale is offered for low-income San Francisco residents. But Palmer, as a resident of Contra Costa County, wasn’t eligible for the program. “If you were uninsured and making less than $10,000, you would pay nothing,” Nazeeri-Simmons said. “But that’s only if you live in the City and County of San Francisco.”After receiving his bill, Palmer complained to the hospital about how much he was being charged. Nazeeri-Simmons acknowledged that a second look was given to the bill at Palmer’s request “and we decided to eliminate the trauma activation charge.” That reduced the amount due by $4,659. But Palmer still owes more than $7,000 for an eight-hour hospital visit that involved, by his estimate, only about 15 minutes of actual care.”It’s unfortunate that he’s in the situation he’s in,” Nazeeri-Simmons said. “But what is an individual hospital to do? Are we supposed to eat the costs?”

She said a government-run program similar to systems in place in all other developed democracies would almost certainly keep costs in check while ensuring that everyone has access to treatment (without being impoverished in the process). “Universal coverage would mean that a Joey Palmer doesn’t get left out in the cold just because he was in the wrong county,” Nazeeri-Simmons said.

For his part, Palmer said he’ll try to pay off his hospital bill as best he can. And then, if he can swing it, he’ll leave the country. He’s thinking seriously about moving to France. “If you get sick over there,” Palmer mused, “you can go to any hospital and it won’t cost a fortune.” He said that with a tone of quiet disbelief.