The Fight For Single Payer
By Steven Argue
As an advocate for social justice and someone with no healthcare, I am strongly in favor of national healthcare like in Cuba, and short of that a single payer system would be a significant step forward.
National healthcare does work. It is working very well in Cuba. It is interesting that tiny poor Cuba under a U.S. economic blockade is able to provide good healthcare for everyone. Cuba, unlike the United States, does not let people die in the emergency rooms without treatment or turn sick people away from receiving healthcare because they lack insurance. Cuba has taken the profit out of illness and injury and provide healthcare as a human right.
Likewise, while the United States is sending military troops to set up death squad governments in Iraq and Haiti and to intervene in Afghanistan, the Phillipines, and prop up the death squad government of Colombia, Cuba instead sends doctors. Cuban doctors save lives. They are on the ground in a number of countries providing regular care, and they are also sent to countries in emergencies. A few years back Cuba sent doctors to Central America after a bad hurricane and saved many lives. Likewise they offered to send doctors to New Orleans immediately after Katrina, they were well trained in dealing with that type of situation and would have saved lives, but Bush refused to let them in. A similar thing happened with the Nicaraguan government refusing entry, but that government let the Cuban doctors in due to protests.
And Canada, also unlike the United States, has better healthcare where everyone is covered. Lately the NAFTA agreement has unfortunately been intervening against the Canadian single payer system, but it is still a much better system of healthcare than the United States. Single payer is much cheaper and more efficient than the health insurance racket. Unfortunately the Democrats and Republicans are subservient to the insurance, pharmaceutical, and for-profit hospital industries. Single payer eliminates the health insurance racket with all of its waste in profits, paperwork, and overpaid CEOs. And despite the cries of the extreme right neo-cons and libertarians, none of the major candidates have any plans to make any significant change to the healthcare racket in America.
It will take a major struggle against the corporate power structure to gain single payer healthcare. The main force that has the potential strength to do so is organized labor, a force that could shut down production to make our demands.
Unfortunately many of the unions that are supposed to represent labor are in the back pockets of the corporations and the Democrat Party. Instead of fighting for single payer healthcare the SEIU recently held rallies for Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada), Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri), and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota). None of these corporate politicians support single payer healthcare.
This is bad enough, but Dawn Lee, spokesperson for the SEIU, says the SEIU takes no position on HR 676, a single payer bill introduced by Conyers.
There are unions, such as the California Nurses Association (CNA), that support single payer. But until the labor movement breaks its love affair with the corporate Democrat Party, and begins to once again rely on the militant action of the rank and file, as it did in the 1930’s, we will not only not gain single payer healthcare, our standard of living will continue to decline by every other indicator as well while massive corporate profits soar/sore.
Pass HR 676, single payer for the United States!
Pass SB 840, single payer in California!
Put union dues into strike funds instead of the Democrat Party!
For mass action and a general strike for single payer healthcare!
End the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba!
Preserve Canadian Single Payer, Repeal NAFTA!
Steven Argue for Liberation News:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news
posted by Matthew Andrews @ 8:46 AM
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