http://themilitant.com/2017/8131/813101.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 31 August 21, 2017
(lead article, Socialist Workers Party statement)
Workers face health care crisis under capitalist rule
Workers need health care, not health insurance!
Staff Sgt. John Wilkes/180th Fighter Wing Ohio National Guard
Thousands turned out for free health clinic in Hayesville, North
Carolina. Above, waiting after filling out paper work. “We work, but we
can’t get health coverage,” one worker told Militant.
The following statement was issued Aug. 9, by Lisa Potash, Socialist
Workers Party candidate for mayor of Atlanta.
Thousands of working people — and their pets — turned out to stand in
long lines at the weeklong military-run free medical fair in Hayesville,
North Carolina. It’s the only thing they can afford. But there are only
18 such fairs across the country this year. And there’s no time for
individualized treatment. If your tooth hurts, they pull it.
Working people need — and deserve — a health care system that provides
free, quality, preventative health care, from cradle to grave, as a
social right.
Obamacare and the different failed Republican insurance schemes, as well
as calls for a so-called “single payer” government-regulated insurance
plan, are all designed to be cash cows for the owners of the parasitic
insurance industry. And health insurance is just one division of the
massive for-profit “health industry” rooted in the giant drug, hospital
and related corporations. Workers who do have some insurance
increasingly face soaring premiums and deductibles, and growing “donut
holes,” for the privilege of getting less and less care. Especially in
rural areas, hospital bosses are deciding they can’t make sufficient
profits and are closing maternity wards, operating rooms or shutting
down entirely.
Individual union-won, company-based insurance plans are under increasing
attack by bosses trying to solve their worldwide capitalist economic
crisis on our backs. Medicare and Medicaid, conquests of past workers’
struggles, are in the gunsights of government cost cutters. Millions
simply don’t have any coverage.
We can’t look to the Washington “swamp” to solve this burning social
question for us. The capitalist politicians of all stripes won’t and
can’t do it. It’s up to us.
We need to strengthen and transform our unions so they can fight to
unite working people in the struggle for free, nationwide health care.
We must fight to expropriate hospitals when bosses threaten to shut them
down, to be run by health care workers themselves.
Expropriate the drug, hospital and medical equipment corporations and
place them under the control of those who work there! Industries vital
to workers’ needs can’t be the business of private capital.
These steps would sound the death knell of the insurance racket, whose
only role is to generate profit, providing no care for anyone at all.
This fight is possible as part of building a movement of millions to
carry out a social revolution to replace the political power of the
ruling rich with workers power, to build a society based on human
solidarity.
This perspective is not impossible or utopian.
In revolutionary Cuba there is no health insurance. The Cuban people use
the fruits of their labor to guarantee health care for everyone. In 1959
Cuban workers and farmers overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship there
and took political power. They carried out a socialist revolution, and
created a world-renowned, preventative health care system that is
available as a social right. This is an example we can emulate.
Related articles:
Workers discuss way out of capitalist health care disaster
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