EDITORIAL
A tale of two health care systems
The recent anthrax scare raised big questions about
weaknesses in the under-funded U.S. public-health apparatus.
The profit-driven health-care system is rich in high-tech,
expensive treatments available for everything from cosmetic
surgery through in-vitro fertilization to implanting of
artificial hearts. Yet it was unable to respond effectively to
a perceived epidemic.
Its ability to respond to a very real epidemic, AIDS, was no
better. The right wing scapegoated people with AIDS. The
government refused to allocate adequate funding for research
and care. The drug companies charged outrageous prices for
medications. All this exposed the inability of a
"public-health" system to safeguard the public health in the
context of medical care for profit.
Even the most developed technology in capitalist health care
is inadequate to meet the needs of a large sector of the
population because the best care is reserved for those who can
afford it. That's the bad news.
The good news comes out of Cuba. There, despite the 40-year
economic blockade Washington imposed and the relative lack of
wealth, this year the socialized health-care system reported
significant advances. These advances were due mainly to an
extensive public-health system that reaches all members of
Cuban society and has their confidence and cooperation.
Not that there aren't technological gains in Cuba, too. Its
well-educated doctors and scientists have developed, for
example, a vaccine for one of the hepatitis varieties that has
been used worldwide.
But the real gains have come from a free public-health
system in a society that places the health of its population
before profits. Indeed, its whole economic system is based not
on profit but on people's needs.
Cuban President Fidel Castro announced Dec. 5 that Cuba had
been able to limit the number of people who were infected with
HIV to 3,600 since the ailment first appeared on the island in
1986. Some 900 people have died of AIDS-related causes. This
was remarkable for a country of 11 million people and a triumph
for socialist health care.
And the Cuban president announced that the country's
infant-mortality rate had fallen to 6.2 per 1,000 live births
in 2001, down from 7.2 in 2000.
This is a particularly significant figure, since it is a
measure of widespread adequate nourishment, good hygienic
conditions for expectant mothers, good education and early and
careful medical monitoring of pregnancies by well-trained and
easily accessible health providers to anticipate problems.
This infant mortality rate compares favorably with that in
the United States. The rate in this country in 2000 was 6.9 per
1,000 live births; it might even increase this year given the
economic decline and the cutbacks in available medical care.
The real scandal for U.S. capitalism, though, is the rates in
large African American communities, which can be double the
Cuban rate.
Reprinted from the Dec. 20, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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