The “freedom” to have no health care
NO COUNTRY has such a well-behaved intellectual and political class in virtual lockstep as the U.S. Where else can 2 percent of the population own 90 percent of the wealth--and have the gall to call it a "democracy"--and where having no public health care is called "being free"?
The world may be forgiven for thinking that any American can simply walk into a hospital and be treated by compassionate, good-looking doctors who never discuss payment. This is part of the carefully choreographed image of America that corporate advertising and Hollywood bombards the world with.
The reality is a life-or-death nightmare for tens of millions of Americans. Along with a depressingly exhausting bureaucratic maze, those with low-quality or no insurance literally face death, untreated illnesses and crippling debt. Medical bills are the most common reason for personal bankruptcy, and years of hard work can be wiped out by a serious illness.
As if losing one's livelihood was not enough, workers actually lose their health coverage on becoming unemployed. This morally perverse system has been sold to the people as economic logic, freedom and as the best in the world.
Unlike most other industrialized nations, the right to live a dignified healthy life, or live at all, in the U.S. depends on wealth and status. This is the brutal fact about the precariousness of life for working-class, and increasing numbers of middle-class, Americans. The lack of a meaningful public health care system is an attack on the very right to live. Reason tells us that Americans should be united in the demand for a universal need-based health care.
Instead, the last three years have witnessed a shrill response coordinated by conservative groups, billionaires and private insurance companies. The corporations, and the politicians they own, at least have a rational financial interest in maintaining the status quo. What motivates the screaming anti-health care protesters--ordinary Americans betraying their own interests by becoming unpaid cheerleaders for private interests and billionaires?
THE LOGIC of the right wing is of a revolution in reverse.
A public health care system is "big government" which is "anti-freedom" and "anti-American," since Americanism is equated with freedom. Behind this simplistic grandstanding is the ever-present whiff of class contempt and racism--along with poor whites, a disproportionate number of poor minorities would benefit the most from any future public health care system.
The right's backlash had an effect such that Obama's 2010 health care legislation was tepid, incomprehensible and anything but universal coverage, leaving the private sector firmly in control.
The argument that a public health system would cost too much ignores the vast inefficiencies of the private system, the profits currently reaped by hospitals and drug companies and the massive misallocation of resources. Economies far smaller than that of the U.S. have managed to provide universal health care for their citizens. Despite the current deficit, even leaving aside the bloated military budget and illegal wars, a basic public health care system could be easily funded by reversing the Bush tax cuts for the super-wealthy, closing corporate tax loopholes and forcing the drug companies to obey price limits.
The tax cuts alone would, if abolished, save trillions.
Perhaps there is another, more basic reason, why the rulers will never allow comprehensive health care. This reason has nothing to do with costs and profits, and everything to do with maintaining perpetual insecurity.
Given America's long history of repressing workers' rights, making health care dependent upon employment makes it an effective mechanism for social and workplace control.
Workers fearful of losing coverage and exposing their families to sickness are much easier to control and more likely to accept stagnant wages. People covered by a public universal health plan, independent of employment, would be less fearful, harder to control and more assertive in wage demands.
The war against universal health care reflects not only corporate power, but also the desire to control and intimidate workers and the cruel contempt the elites have for ordinary people. Healthy bodies could lead to healthy minds--and this is something the American corporate state cannot and will not allow.
Paolo Bassi, from the Internet
