The hard reality of health care for profit
From a talk by Andre Powell at the
Dec. 2-3 Workers World Party conference.
TV dramas like "City of Angels," "Chicago Hope" and "E.R."
would lead viewers to believe that all medial patients have
access to health care simply for the asking. This couldn't be
further from the truth.
Under capitalism, health care has become a
multi-billion-dollar industry whose only goal is to make more
profits. In this quest for profit, health care is mostly
available to those of higher economic status, leaving the
majority of poor and working people without. The United
States is only of only three of the 30 industrialized
countries that doesn't guarantee health care.
In Maryland, recent surveys cite lack of health care as
the second highest concern of people 18 and older. Until the
end of 1970s there was health insurance for most Marylanders.
Nearly 20 years later, in 1998, statistics showed Maryland's
uninsured numbered over 837,000, including 100,000
children.
The decline in the number of insured began with the Reagan
administration ushering in the era of hostile mergers and
takeovers among the leading health-care companies. These
mergers translated into mega-profits in Maryland and across
the U.S.
In "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism," Lenin
wrote of the concentration of capital into fewer hands as
monopolies eat up their competition. There is no finer
example to be found than that of Maryland's Aetna, an HMO.
Through a series of mergers and buying up several HMOs, Aetna
now controls 60 percent of the state's health-insurance
industry. Aetna's director is also the longest-serving member
on the board of directors of tobacco giant Phillip
Morris.
These few statistics don't even begin to tell the true
stories of desperation and fear of our working-class sisters
and brothers when the door to health care is shut. These are
stories that I hear on a daily basis as a caseworker with the
Baltimore City Department of Social Services. This year I
have listened to one story after another of my clients who
have been turned away from hospital emergency rooms because
they don't have medical insurance.
A year ago, the hospitals would see you and send you a
bill. Now if you don't have medical insurance, they sometimes
don't even ask your name.
A simple call for a national health-care plan or a
statewide health-care plan is an important reform measure.
But reforms will never achieve the goal of health care for
all. Only a complete and thorough reconstruction of society
can achieve that goal. And it must be a society based on the
principles of socialism, where health care is a right--not a
means of making profits to fatten the assets of some dirty
rotten capitalist.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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