Well, it’s time to be afraid of the F-cash again

#time #afraid #Fcash

Expect cancer patients to go to work

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full screen Ulf Kristersson in the government plane Photo: Christine Olsson/TT

The blog post that would change the election debate started in tears.

“I have cried. Yes, I have bawled like a child. I’ve been trudging lap after lap around the apartment like a restless dog. (…)

Today, my mother was told that she has four months to sell her apartment. Now I will tell you about the last five years of her life.”

It was September 15, 2010, a few days before the parliamentary elections. The author called herself “Woman with cat”. The blog had the slightly absurd name “The chlamydia letter“. It didn’t have any large crowds of readers, until now.

Actually, the woman with the cat was called Emelie Holmquist. And she was distraught at how her mother Annica had been treated.

After the 2006 election, the M-led government had cut both the unemployment insurance and health insurance. They had also introduced a “stumbling block” so that after a certain number of days the money stopped being paid even if people were still sick.

Now the car fell.

Five years earlier, mother had become ill, Emelie said in the blog, very ill. It was a terrible time. She had been in and out of various treatments. But in the spring of 2010, she was suddenly called to the employment agency instead.

“For my mother, the days are not like for you or me. She doesn’t have what we call normal stamina,” writes Emelie.

The whole morning before the meeting, the mother had been vomiting, writes Emelie, a side effect of the illness. But Arbetsförmedlingen couldn’t do anything, she was sick and couldn’t work.

About a week later, the news came: Annica Holmquist was insured.

The “chlamydia letter” hit like a bomb. The election campaign in 2010 changed direction. Thousands of people recognised, engaged and shared on social media and blogs. Millions listened when Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt himself had to defend the treatment of Annica Holmquist in SVT’s big final debate.

It went pretty bad.

That the Social Insurance Agency would run people like Annica Holmquist from home was the very point of the so-called “work line” that Fredrik Reinfeldt and the Alliance introduced.

It would simply be punishing to be sick and unemployed in the Sweden of the Moderates. What the Chlamydia letter pointed to was that it could affect any of us. Annica Holmquist had worked thirty years as a dental hygienist, done the right thing for herself and paid taxes. Almost never been sick.

Now she was referred to the social welfare office. And what many people don’t know is that you then have to sell almost everything you own before you get help, including your home.

Soon we will be there again.

The government intends to cut social insurance in particular. A government investigation, “Health insurance in change – an evaluation” will be completed on April 2.

We don’t yet know exactly what it proposes. But under the previous S-led government, the rules became a little less generous. The stumbling block in the form Reinfeldt introduced was abolished in 2015, although in all honesty it didn’t get much better. Many were still insured after 180 days. During the pandemic, more relief came, including a more generous view of time limits.

According to information to Dagens Arena the investigator will propose that the old rules be reinstated. The sharper 180-day limit is on its way back.

The investigation itself was appointed by the previous government, but after the election the investigator has been replaced. It was Per Johansson, professor of statistics, as before advocated a more restrictive health insurance. The investigation is thus in fact a political order job.

There is probably reason to fear the worst.

When, during the election campaign, LO pointed out in advertisements that it would be like this, they were accused by a united right and bourgeois opinion makers of slander and lies.

“On September 11, you choose: Impaired health insurance with Ulf Kristersson or security for ordinary people with Magdalena Andersson” read LO’s message.

Last time, the result was that cancer patients were forced to work and that suicides increased. Now Ulf Kristersson wants to reintroduce the same policy, LO wrote.

Expressen’s editorial page, under the political editor Anna Dahlberg who is today Ulf Kristersson’s state secretary, called it “black painting” and wrote that “The LO base spreads dung for the workers’ money”.

It might be worth remembering today. When the same Anna Dahlberg is now carrying out exactly what LO warned about.

“The rhetoric is completely nonsensical,” wrote Expressen.

Oh well.

The pointless thing was rather if someone thought that the right wing and the Sweden Democrats would really care about the economy and everyday life of ordinary people.

Health insurance is one of several examples. Before the election promised Jimmie Åkesson to join the opposition if Ulf Kristersson were to cut the A fund. Now do The Tidö parties exactly thatto applause from… Jimmie Åkesson.

– Some of our groups will lose over two thousand bucks a month compared to today. That money doesn’t exist, it doesn’t work, those margins don’t exist in these families, says Torbjörn Johansson, LO’s contract secretary, to The work.

It is the same in dental insurance as well. SD promised in its election manifesto to invest seven billion in dental care. A visit to the dentist would cost the same as going to the health center. After the election, they have instead worsened the dental care insurance, saved 450 million, and removed free dental care for young adults between 23 and 19 years old.

“When you go to an election, you say one thing before the election. Then the election is carried out, so you also say something after the election” as Johan Pehrson put it.

And when you are exposed, you accuse the media or the opposition of lying.

It becomes very tiring in the long run.

The bitter truth is that the “line of work” of the right is probably less about economics than about humanity. Or rather two different ones human views.

In Ulf Kristersson’s Sweden, rich people work better if they can carrots, more money, low tax and big deductions. Poor people, on the other hand, need whips such as reduced A-kassa and lower sickness benefit, preferably none at all.

There is a difference between people and people.

And if you’re not rich, you have only yourself to blame.