The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 175ERASED RIGHTS, INVISIBLE DISEASES175Because it also happens that they are offered, and then they don’t make it happen,they don’t arrange status.” (Interview with nurse L)This construct portrays people without health insurance as negligent, carelessand irresponsible about their health, which is supposedly manifested as disregardfor regular updating of their medical card and irregular visits to doctors.The following response of an employee at the emergency unit of the UniversityMedical Center in Ljubljana is illustrative of this attitude. According to thetestimony of the erased person with the pseudonym Mara, he dismissed her withthe argument that she had waited too long before she visited a doctor:M: I was very, very ill and I was bleeding. Almost three weeks, for twenty onedays I was bleeding. But they still refused to admit me to the Medical Center.S: The emergency ward?M: Yes.S: What did they say? That you couldn’t be admitted because you didn’t have ahealth insurance card?M: Yes.S: What did they say?M: They said that they couldn’t admit me, because if I had been bleeding for solong, then I could go to my gynaecologist. … I told them that I didn’t have a gynaecologist,that I didn’t have any doctor. I told them that I was already atmenopause and that I did not have my periods any longer, so I could bleed todeath, I could die. I told them all of this, but they refused to examine me.S: And what happened after that?M: Nothing. It stopped by itself and I no longer had problems. (Mara, 57)Another aspect of the construct about uninsured persons is that they arecunning and crafty, so they evade payments for health insurance and count onthe benevolence of and solidarity from health care institutions. Health care workerswho succumb to these kinds of representations refuse to accept their explanationsbecause they probably see it as part of the tactics to avoid financial obligations.M: I paid for everything, but they still asked me all sorts of things, how come Ididn’t have a medical card, they didn’t believe, they puzzled over it, rebuked me.X: Rebuked?M: Yes, that’s what they did. “Why don’t you have a medical card? Why haven’tyou fixed it?” Then, when I explained to them, they didn’t believe me and stillsaid, “Well, why haven’t you fixed it?” (Jana S., 30)The construct of an uninsured person which is connected with implicit mentalrepresentations about planned irresponsibility, cunning and craftiness of uninsuredpersons is very similar to the well-established prejudice about the erasedpeople propounded by the right-wing political parties. In their discourse, erased