#chileansituation

Along the same lines, they asked the Ministry of Health, "which manages healthcare networks, to transparent (the number of wounded) and break with this informative fence"

By The Dynamo October 23, 2019

Izkia Siches, president of the Medical College, denounced pressure to not provide information about her work during social demonstrations throughout the country.

“As an advisory and collaborating entity of the NHRI, we have also been working training our own colleagues who have been, in part, intimidated to not provide information and, many other times, to take legal action against those who go to the assistance centers to attend people” she told to Radio Cooperativa.

Siches told to Radio Cooperativa that “at first we had an informational fence. The hospital directors themselves refused to give information to some entities. ”

"Particularly we have also tried to compile a parallel register, that allows us to objectify how many people have been injured, and there is an important underreporting of many of these injured, as well as a lack of advice to know that many of them can file delations for violation of human rigths", argued the president of the Medical College.

Along the same lines, they asked the Ministry of Health, "which manages the healthcare networks, to transparent (the number of injured) and break with this informative fence."

Meanwhile, when asked about the announcements made by Sebastián Piñera, Izkia Siches assured that an opportunity to make profound advances in the health system was wasted, indicating that “in health we are in debt”.

"We had a lot of consensus on several points, and we expected this situation of social conflict to increase sensitivity, but they are the same proposals as months ago," she said.

The leader said that "the President slammed the door for any structural change in health and we believe that in social movements, one of the demands that have been raised the most, has to do with health."

Although the union leader valued the change of tone in the president's message, she explained the main demands, stating that “today we continue with input problems in the hospital centers and the minister has grossly denied that in the media. On the other hand, we have asked for a substantial increase in the budget for health, to start walking to ensure that 6% of GDP is invested in public spending on health, which is what WHO recommends ”.

Via Reddit: What is going on with the protest in Chile? (r/OutOfTheLoop)

Written by: georgeoftheandes

Chilean here. The rioting started with a call to evade the payment of the subway - a state owned company - after a panel of experts decided the price had to increase. The price after the hike was set to $830. However, the subway can operate, at a profit, with $600 and the difference is to subsidize the buses of the private concessionaires which are usually derelict machines. The subway was made the core of the public transportation system in 2003 and it has been bad and insufficient since then.

As you can imagine, the price hike was only the tip of the iceberg. For the last 15 or 20 years economic growth has been stable, but salaries of the middle and poor have remained constant although indexed to inflation - an index that rarely reflects the actual cost of living of poor people. As an example, avocados which were a staple of Chilean diet since the times of Allende can now be found at lower prices in Europe than in the local farmer's market.

Food prices are related to an ongoing drought. The drought is partially related to global warming, but a lot of water is diverted to plantations and mining and companies don't just grab their allotment: they grab a lot more. This is another source of discontent as water rights are owned by rich privates and landlords.

Since the average salary is low, the resulting pensions are miserable. The pensions system dates back to 1982 and since its inception it has been known that it had to be adapted. A women retiring at 60 will have her pension savings exhausted by the time she is 67, while her life expectation is 79. Guys fare a bit better, but since the average salary here is 600,000 pesos per month (USD 800, heavily skewed to lower numbers than that) then the average pension is lower than minimum wage. Efforts to fix this during the last years have resulted in discussion of the politicians around who is going to manage the money and not about the amount of the pension.

Health coverage is the best if you can afford an expensive insurance plan. State coverage is supposed to cover for everything in the most expensive (economically catastrophic) diseases such as cancer, aids, rare genetic diseases, etc.... but with a small print such as the coverage is for those who get the disease at an age when its improbable you will get it. State health staff and hospitals is insufficient, so people need to arrive at 5am to expect to be seen at some time during the day.

Pretty much every administration since the return to the democracy has given more of the cake to big foreign and local investors and has turned a blind eye to company mergers that result in a huge concentration of the market.

There is a general distrust in institutions. A rich banker which evades taxes is sentenced to ethics classes, while a middle-class guy will lose everything, so the courts are not trusted. The carabineros (the police) used to be the last bastion of trust from the populace but it has recently been found that they have been misappropriating millions of dollars from their budget; same with the army.

The members of parliament make 32 times the minimum wage - their compensation is higher than most middle-sized companies' CEOs. Yet they just spend time adding 'political gestures' in laws supposed to be for the general good, introducing an artificial noise in the operation of the law.

Finally, the executive power here is almighty. Law initiatives start in the president's office to be sent to the congress. So the last 4 administrations (Bachelet 1 and 2, Piñera 1 and 2) have been pushing for laws that were sold to the people as huge social improvements, that in the end were just a matter of redistributing who owned the structures and who managed them.

One of the great changes of those administrations is that participation in elections are not compulsory anymore, so a lot of people do not feel represented by anybody so they don't vote instead of attending the booth and writing down their option which is legal. So the representatives elected represent a minority of the minority.

So people feel cheated. Discontent has been brewing for decades and now we want these fuckers in power to stop waisting everybody's lives.

What’s wrong, Chile? An Essay. (In english, in a nutshell)

Via IG:  Franned