https://themilitant.com/2020/02/29/fight-for-govt-funded-cradle-to-grave-health-care/
Fight for gov’t-funded, cradle-to-grave health care!
article
Vol. 84/No. 9
March 9, 2020
The U.S. government, the most powerful imperialist power on the planet,
like every other capitalist power around the world, is far from prepared
for the
spread of coronavirus. The virus is new, no one is immune, and it will
take time to develop an antidote.
The rulers in China and Iran tried to pretend things weren’t so bad and
working people are paying for it. The administration in Washington tells
us they’ve
got everything in hand and complain the media is trying to make
coronavirus “look as bad as possible.”
The deadly impact of the virus will fall overwhelmingly on working
people in the U.S., as it does elsewhere, exacerbating the broader
social, economic
and moral crisis of capitalism bearing down on us.
Millions of workers already confront the declining availability of
health care. Hospitals have been closing in rural areas and
working-class neighborhoods,
where the owners decide they aren’t making enough profit. The system of
health insurance in the U.S. — whether it’s “Obamacare,” private health
insurance
or the Medicare-for-all insurance schemes promoted by a wing of the
Democrats — is designed to guarantee a profit for hospital bosses and
drug and insurance
companies, not to provide the health care working people need and deserve.
If we can’t afford to pay the rising costs they charge for premiums,
deductibles or copays, we have to go without something that should be a
basic human
right.
The capitalist rulers consider the provision of health care to workers a
nonproductive expense. Hospital bosses are notorious for transporting
homeless
people seeking care out of the city and dumping them. The capitalist
rulers seek to impose the responsibility for medical care onto
individual workers
and our families. And if you don’t change your lifestyle — quit smoking,
lose weight, etc. — they want to make you pay more. You’re on your own.
Health care is social right
Health care is a social question. The working class and our unions need
to fight for government-funded cradle-to-grave health care for all. Our
labor produces
all the wealth, more than enough to provide care for all, for a
lifetime. The problem is the employers expropriate that wealth for
themselves. So they
don’t have to worry about the costs of getting treatment.
Health care as a social right can only be won by class struggle,
including breaking from all the capitalists’ parties, which insist that
the health insurance
racket is untouchable. It will take massive struggles by workers and our
allies to take the hospitals and drug companies out of the hands of the
capitalists
who run them for profit and organize to run them under workers control
in the interest of all. But it can be done.
Revolutionary Cuba is the one country in the world where health care is
not a commodity, where the surplus workers and farmers produce is used
to provide
lifelong, preventative health care for every person. And where thousands
of volunteer medical workers provide much needed care throughout the
world, treating
all they look after with dignity and respect. A vivid account is
provided in the recently published
Red Zone: Cuba and the Battle Against Ebola in West Africa.
The volunteers’ internationalism, author Enrique Ubieta writes, “is an
expression of their revolutionary humanism.”
As Che Guevara said, to be a revolutionary doctor you have to make a
revolution.
Revolution transformed working people in Cuba
This is only possible because Cuban workers and farmers made a
revolution and the government today is in their hands. Making that
revolution transformed
working people. They simply look at the problems they confront — from
the U.S. rulers’ economic war against them to the threat of coronavirus
— as the
responsibility of the whole people.
Whatever they face — a hurricane, a threat of disease, or anything else
— they prepare, mobilize the whole people and resources of their
government, and
take it on.
The Socialist Workers Party campaign is grounded in the conviction that
it is possible to emulate that example. We can mobilize in our millions
to overthrow
the dictatorship of the capitalist class here, take power into our own
hands and open the door to working people running society. Join us in
campaigning
for Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett, the working-class alternative in
2020!
article end
list of 4 items
Audio version
Share
Email
Print
list end
RELATED ARTICLES
article
Capitalist economies wobble as coronavirus cases spread
Media worldwide headlined the news Feb. 24 with reports that coronavirus
infections and deaths were spreading outside China, where it originated,
with
spikes in South Korea, Japan, Iran and northern Italy. Capitalist
governments around the world either admit their health…
article end
IN THIS ISSUE
Front Page Articles
list of 6 items
• ‘We need a labor party, independent of the bosses’
• Capitalist two party system’s stability won’t be restored
• New Zealand protesters say ‘Abortion is not a crime’
• Striking Asarco miners protest bosses’ union-busting attacks
• Federal court says Florida law gutting felons’ right to vote is
unconstitutional
• Over a million Syrians forced to flee Idlib in face of regime’s offensive
list end
Feature Articles
list of 1 items
• New book on Ebola launched at Cuban tropical medicine school
list end
Also In This Issue
list of 8 items
• Kennedy: ‘All workers should back Asarco strike’
• Back Socialist Workers Party 2020 campaign Contribute to $25,000 fund!
• Families, former inmates, SWP protest conditions at Georgia jail
• Capitalist economies wobble as coronavirus cases spread
• Women in Iraq say no to segregation of protesters
• ‘Communism is not a doctrine but a movement’
• Bosses step up spying on workers — on and off the job
• Join 2020 May Day international brigade to Cuba!
list end
Editorials
list of 1 items
• Fight for gov’t-funded, cradle-to-grave health care!
list end
Books of the Month
list of 1 items
• ‘Second-class status of women arose with class society’
list end
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Letters
Corrections
main region end
© Copyright 2020 The Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New
York, NY 10018 -
themilitant@xxxxxxx
Cookies
This site uses cookies to improve your experience.
Learn more.
Okay, thanks
--
___
Neil deGrasse Tyson
“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
