Health care system is crumbling for many

Nearly 46 million people in the U.S. are without medical insurance. Millions of seniors and disabled people are in crisis due to the Bush administration’s Medicare Drug Plan swindle. And millions more face great harm from Medicaid cutbacks.

President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech didn’t even address the drug plan because it has been such an unmitigated disaster. Nor did he raise any proposals that would help the uninsured. Instead, he pitched health care savings accounts, high-deductible medical insurance plans and tax breaks—all that would only benefit the rich, discourage employer-based insurance, and do nothing for working and poor people.

The very next day the House of Repre sentatives passed the “Budget Recon ciliation Bill,” which slashes nearly $40 billion from essential programs over five years and nearly $100 billion over 10 years—one-half from Medicaid and Medicare. This will be disastrous for the poorest families.

Hidden in that bill is a discriminatory provision barely mentioned in the media which can affect millions: Medicaid will require proof of citizenship. This will keep out not only undocumented workers, but many other oppressed people, seniors and children who may lack birth certificates or passports.

And then Bush dropped another bombshell: his 2007 budget proposal. It calls for a $36 billion cut in Medicare over five years. It would cut cancer research and preventative disease programs, even oxygen equipment for the elderly.

The Bush administration has continued massive tax cuts for the rich. And the warmakers are demanding another $120 billion for the war chest for the next two years. Congressional Republicans and Demo crats alike voted for the drug plan, budget cuts, war funding and tax cuts for the billionaires.

The White House, with help from Con gress, is coming up with more and more schemes that put the burden for health care costs on consumers, letting government and employers off the hook. They are viciously dismantling hard-fought-for federal medical programs that were set up to help working-class and poor families, seniors and the disabled, and are putting the financial burden on them. This will lead to enormous hardships and drive many more into the ranks of the uninsured, and thus, without medical care. The health of many, including children, will deteriorate.

Big business is getting even richer in the process. The federal government’s top officials are working hand-in-glove with the big insurance and drug companies to maximize their super-profits. Other big corporations are gloating too, as they pay less for retirees’ health benefits.

Seniors and disabled people in every state have been angrily voicing complaints to their representatives about the hurdles they’ve faced, as they struggle to get drugs or supplies covered. Many are going without. The poorest and sickest, those who were on Medicaid and Medicare, are facing daily nightmares.

The government and insurance companies no doubt are hoping that the poorest and most disabled drop out of these programs altogether because they incur more costs—a cruel fact of how insurance works under capitalism. This phony idea that “free market” health care is a good thing has been shown to be a lie to the millions who are being held hostage by these companies and who have no recourse for their myriad of problems.

Seniors who appealed to Congress for relief on the drug plan were turned down flat. Two days after Bush’s speech, the Senate rejected an attempt to postpone drug plan enrollment from May 15 to Dec. 31, without penalties, and they denied dissatisfied beneficiaries the right to change drug plans.

But what will turn things around? What is needed is more Medicare and Medicaid, not less! Health care should be guaranteed to all who need it, with full benefits, including for medications, dental care, mental health treatment—paid for and administered by the government directly, without unnecessary middlemen insurance companies, and certainly with no say by the drug industry.

Only a mass movement for a national health program—which puts people’s needs first and not the profits of insurance and drug companies or the war budget—can help solve the growing health care crisis.

It will take organizing and building grassroots opposition and a real fighting movement to win this—just like the women’s, civil rights and workers’ movements have done over decades to win everything from the 8-hour day to reproductive rights to affirmative action. That’s what won Medicare and Medicaid in the first place.