SiCKO II

SiCKO II is not a sequel to Michael Moore’s increasingly popular documentary on the failed health care system in the U.S. It’s the effort of the rightist George Bush administration to make an already bad system worse.

How will Bush do this? By vetoing the bills now before the U.S. Congress that would subsidize health care insurance for millions of children and seniors.

There is an existing program, under different names in different states, that currently provides health insurance for 6 million children. To be eligible for this program you don’t need to be as destitute of funds as you do to have Medicaid coverage. That means with plans like Child Health Plus, working people who are low-income have the opportunity to get medical care for their children.

The bills up before the Senate would increase federal funding to cover an additional 3 million children; the House bill would cover an additional 5 million. Some 9 million of the 45 million people without health insurance in the U.S. are children, so even the House bill would still leave 4 million children uncovered.

The House bill would also improve the benefits for people on the Medicare plan, who are mostly seniors. An increase in tobacco taxes is supposed to pay for each of the bills.

Normally a tussle in Congress over a bill like this, which would be mainly along party lines, would result in some rotten compromise between Republicans and Democrats. Workers and the poor would wind up with a lot less than the bill first promised and some big companies would get even richer from it.

But the arrogant Bush gang and its reactionary hangers-on in Congress promise they will make no compromises. They say they will fight any improvement in government-provided health care tooth and nail. Government’s role, according to them, is not to help the poor, but to help the rich steal even more from the poor. They denounce the bill as “a first step toward socialized medicine,” and Bush promised to veto it.

What sharpens the struggle over these health care bills is that they are in Congress at a time when the population of the U.S., and especially the working class here, is acutely aware of the health care system’s shortcomings. Bosses have eliminated much job-related health insurance or dumped the payments on the workers’ backs. Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) run by insurance companies have routinely denied needed care. The for-profit health care system has shown that it doesn’t work. And even as people have grown madder about these experiences, Moore’s film SiCKO has generalized their experiences and shown millions that there is another way.

Since this also takes place at a time when everyone knows that more than a half-trillion dollars has been squandered on the criminal wars against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s easy for all to see where the money should come from to pay for additional health care—with or without a tobacco tax. Stop funding the war.

In other words, instead of a squabble between the parties, this particular dispute has the potential of awakening a real class struggle, one that could unite different sectors of the massive U.S. working class in a progressive effort. Such an effort could provide most for the most oppressed and will help nearly every worker. And this struggle can and should demand health coverage not only for 5 million children, but for all children. It should not leave out any of the seniors on Medicare, either, and take care of all those in between.