https://themilitant.com/2020/05/23/medicine-in-the-us-is-capitalist-business-not-for-health-care/
Medicine in the US is capitalist business, not for health care
article
BY TERRY EVANS
Vol. 84/No. 21
June 1, 2020
Wounded mercenary is treated after capture at defeated U.S.-backed Bay
of Pigs invasion, 1961. Even before the revolution, July 26 Movement
provided medical
care equally to workers, peasants, its own combatants and enemy
soldiers. Today health care is freely available to all. figure
Wounded mercenary is treated after capture at defeated U.S.-backed Bay
of Pigs invasion, 1961. Even before the revolution, July 26 Movement
provided medical
care equally to workers, peasants, its own combatants and enemy
soldiers. Today health care is freely available to all.
Wounded mercenary is treated after capture at defeated U.S.-backed Bay
of Pigs invasion, 1961. Even before the revolution, July 26 Movement
provided medical
care equally to workers, peasants, its own combatants and enemy
soldiers. Today health care is freely available to all. figure end
One of the excuses given by the capitalist rulers for their shutdown of
production is the need to use their resources to fight COVID-19. But the
social
crisis working people face today reveals that there is no such thing as
“health care” for the working class and other exploited layers of the
population
under capitalism.
For the owners of hospitals, insurance and drug companies all aspects of
so-called health care are run to maximize profit. Their starting point
is cutthroat
competition to corner the market in the most lucrative operations, not
to use advances in medicine to provide preventive and hands-on health
care for all.
The five richest private hospital systems in New York City —
NYU-Langone, New York-Presbyterian, Northwell, Mount Sinai and
Montefiore — spent a total
of $149 million on advertising last year.
At the same time hospital bosses are pushing pay cuts and furloughing
nurses and other workers. Those who remain on the job are pushed to do
their work
and that of those laid off, inevitably making conditions worse.
This is true of even the most profitable private hospitals. The
top-ranked hospital in the U.S. — the Mayo Clinic — has furloughed workers.
Public hospitals that depend for funding from government programs are in
the worst shape. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered University of
Brooklyn hospital
in New York City to take only coronavirus patients in March. Nurses at
the facility — which has a leaking roof and uses plastic tarps held
together with
duct tape to separate patients — had their workload doubled.
Inside the hospitals like the Mayo Clinic there are glaring expressions
of class differentiation. “The Minnesota-based hospital system promotes
its services
to well-off patients,” the New York Times reported May 15, with “luxury
amenities such as hotel-like suites with fluffy bathrobes, private
dining rooms
and access to chef-cooked meals.”
Care for elderly workers in nursing homes is the opposite. They are
built to keep residents in tight proximity, to cram in as many as
possible, with insufficient
staff to provide care maximizing profits for the owners. Well before the
current pandemic, an estimated 380,000 residents of nursing homes
nationwide died
from infectious diseases every year.
Under these conditions Cuomo ordered nursing home bosses to admit
patients diagnosed with COVID-19, with no time or space to establish
quarantine. The
measure fueled the spread of the disease and ensured the deaths of
thousands.
Hospitals close during pandemic
The pace of hospital closures in rural areas — and in working-class
neighborhoods in many larger cities — has reached record highs in recent
years. Bosses
say too many people pay with Medicare or Medicaid, and they can’t get
the big bucks they need to make profits. The Mayo Clinic rakes in $566
for each obstetric
ultrasound for patients with private insurance — five times more than
Medicaid pays for the same procedure.
Today’s crisis means more will go broke, as state governments order a
halt to all “nonessential” procedures like colonoscopies, mammograms,
even some cancer
screening and treatment that reap in higher profits.
Some 30 million workers don’t earn enough to afford a health insurance
policy. And insurance often has nothing to do with health care. An
estimated 50
million more can only afford cheaper plans with daunting co-pays and
deductibles, and simply can’t afford many procedures or treatment they
sorely need.
The callous values of those who dictate what working people get was
demonstrated last month by New York state officials who issued a
“do-not-resuscitate”
order for any patient paramedics picked up without a discernable pulse.
The death sentence was ordered to “conserve resources,” they said. It
was withdrawn
after a public outcry.
Workers fight for health care
In the course of struggles against the bosses and their governments over
wages and working conditions, workers will fight for access to health
care as
a basic human right.
One of the best examples was how coal miners and their families fought
tenaciously to force the coal bosses and the government to take steps to
push back
the debilitating black lung disease in the late 1960s. They forced state
governments to establish clinics across the coalfields and provide
disability
benefits. Union safety committees were empowered to shut down production
whenever they judged conditions were unsafe. In the process miners took
back control
of their union.
Since then these gains have been eroded by the bosses, and today the
federal government is looking to get out of responsibility for assuring
black lung
benefits to retired miners. There will be no fundamental advance in
“health care” as long as the capitalist class retains power.
The central leaders of the two great revolutions of the 20th century —
Vladimir Lenin in Russia and Fidel Castro in Cuba — led working people
to take power
and transform social relations, including the organization of medical care.
Speaking at the Second All-Russia Congress of Medical Workers in 1920,
after the Bolshevik-led 1917 revolution, Lenin noted that there was a
time when
“members of the medical profession entertained a distrust of the working
class.”
“But now they, too, are convinced that only together with the
proletariat will it be possible to achieve a flourishing state of
culture in Russia. Only
collaboration between scientists and workers can put an end to
oppressive poverty, disease and dirt. And this will be done.” For the
first time in history
working people and their state reorganized health care for all as a
basic human right.
Cuba’s revolutionary leadership did not wait until the victory in 1959
to begin taking control over health care. They established field
hospitals in the
territories they conquered to treat all who needed care during the
revolutionary war, including wounded enemy soldiers.
The 1959 victory and overturn of capitalist rule opened the door for
working people to begin to run society themselves in the interests of all.
One result is that doctors live in the working-class neighborhoods they
practice in, and organize to visit people regularly. This isn’t because
they have
a “better health care system,” but because of different social relations
that could only arise from making a socialist revolution.
Working people are capable of doing the same thing everywhere.
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