FREE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE FOR ALL!

Commentary

HEALTH CARE IS A RIGHT NOT A PRIVILEGE

Over the past few weeks the leading Democratic presidential contenders, highlighted this week by Hillary Clinton’s plan, have spent time presenting their proposals for health care reform and/or creation of a national health care system. The Republicans simple program, in contrast, seems to follow my late, dearly departed grandmother’s advise- Don’t get sick. Sometimes, and health care is one of those issues, militants get dragged into current controversies where we do not like any of the proposals but we nevertheless have to make some comment to clear the political air on the subject. This seems to be such a time.

Please follow my reasoning on the question of health care. In a civilized society, and for that matter even uncivilized ones, everyone from the tiniest infant to those long of tooth deserves to be healthy. Thus it is a societal obligation to insure that condition. That will moreover still be the case, if not more so, under an advanced socialist society until we get a much better grip on how to handle the still pervasive mysteries of the human body than we have now. Once one assumes that insuring the health of our fellows is a societal task then the solution is practically a ‘no-brainer’. Our underlying slogan in this fight is not just ‘universal’ health coverage for all but free universal health care for all. In short, the real socialized health care solution so dreaded by the likes of the fully health-insured Republican presidential candidate ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Oddly, when he presided over ‘health care reform’ in Massachusetts he signed off on a plan that is very similar to Senator Clinton’s. Hmmm.

Alas, this society is so driven by the imperatives of the capitalist profit motive in all its social policies, even a fundamental one such as health, that such an eminently reasonable notion as free universal health care today has no pray of being advocated much less fought for in mainstream politics. Thus, others place militants in a position of evaluating any health care proposal on whether it drives us toward that above-stated goal. While recognizing that these proposals are not our program any such steps that take some of the profit motive out of the system and expand both the numbers covered and the quality of coverage are steps in the right direction. If such a system actually came into existence we would defend it against right-wing attempts to eliminate it in the same way we defend Social Security against such attempts. We would also raise propaganda around extending benefits and numbers insured. However realistically speaking, once the big business and AMA guns go after this, it looks like such proposals face the same tough sledding as the last efforts at reform in 1993.