Health care in America is a matter of life and death. It is a fundamental necessity of life itself. Without it your very life is in jeopardy.
That is why the vast majority of the American people – the working class – view the current debacle over health care in Washington with a great sense of urgency. With every passing day that the ruling elite bog themselves down in a debate that goes nowhere, a debate that provides no solution, the American people find themselves being put in harm’s way.
The truth is that we don’t really have a health care system in this country. We have a health insurance system that is firmly in the control of corporate capital, whose primary motivation is the increase of profitability. Particularly for the health industry corporations, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical and private medical facility corporations, the measure of health is the health of their bottom line, their profit margin. That puts the health insurance industry in direct opposition with what is supposed to be the primary mission for all of those engaged in caring for the health of all of us: First do no harm!
What lies beneath all of the current efforts to deny accessibility to millions more, is the unstated understanding that the ruling class has no intention to provide health care to a growing section of the population that it no longer needs.
For some time now, since electronic laborless production was introduced into the economy, millions have come to find themselves permanently outside the workforce, and for millions more the only employment available is low-wage, contingent, and part-time work. Following in the path of the systematic destruction of the economy is the decline and destruction of health care itself. It is this new class of workers, created by electronics that are necessarily in the forefront in the battle for the necessities of life. Health care is a central battle zone in this overall fight.
It really comes down to: in whose interests does the government operate, in the interests of the corporations, or in the interests of working people? The corporations have already merged with government to direct the economy and society in their own private interests. If the ruling class has its way, millions more will be denied health care, in the name of the profitability of a privatized health insurance system. A massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the ruling class will be passed on, in the form of tax cuts to the wealthy and the corporations.
Opposed to this are the interests of a working class. For them, “health care is a right.” It is the only possible solution, a material reality for every person. It means a national health care system that guarantees quality health care from the cradle to the grave, for everyone regardless of economic status.
Single payer is an important step in the fight to nationalize health care in the interests of working people, but it can only be seen as a part of the solution the times require. The solution is to make private property public property. There is no room for private, for-profit corporations in a health care system that serves the best interests of the people.
The working class of this country, led by a new class that is being excluded from health care and the other necessities of life, is on course to fight forward to a solution that is in their best interests.
To your health.
September/October 2017 Vol27.Ed5
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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