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Communities surrounding the plants are exposed as well, as are those communities near waste sites. With the growth of the nuclearpower industry, the increased use of food additives, and the long-term legacy from radioactive fallout there is virtually nowhere to run.

Cancer is not only a medical problem as they would have us believe. It is essentially a political and a social problem and prevention must be its cure.

Who pays the bill?

The modern "private enterprise" system could not survive if it had to pay not only the social costs of cleaning up the environment but the medical costs as well. Given the size of the modern-day epidemic of diseases, industry is seeking to assure that it won't be held responsible.

This is the reason that a national health system, to be financed by the taxpayer, is being discussed. It's also the reason that industry went along with a publicly administered workers' compensation system that limits workers to recovering lost wages and renders the corporations immune from liability suits.

Even so, employers routinely fight almost all occupational illness claims; they know that the burden of proof is on the victim. Given the fact that big business has fostered a medical profession that is unconcerned with causes and prevention, it becomes very difficult for a worker to find a doctor who will clearly link the cause of a medical condition to industry.

Under capitalism the working class pays the bill for environmental illness. Not only do workers get ill more often than the wealthy, but they also get the worst medical care. Nevertheless, the working class foots the bill for industry and the wealthy.

MANAGEMENT In the United States, healthcare costs have soared, increasing much faster than the inflation rate. Healthcare expenditures are now approaching 15 percent of the Gross National Product.

Medical care is usually paid for in one of three ways: (1) Twenty-nine percent of all bills are paid for out of the personal income of patients. (2) Thirty-one percent are paid by private insurers. (3) Thirty-nine percent are paid by the federal government through Medicare, Medicaid, and military and veteran healthcare.

Thus employees and taxpayers pay either directly, through taxes, or through insurance premiums for the bulk of the illness caused by the giant corporations. Most at risk are the 37 million Americans who have no health insurance or the one out of six who constitute the working poor and cannot afford escalating insurance premiums.

The Federal Occupational Safety and monitoring or regulating workplace hazards.

Prevention of hazards in the workplace is expensive, and a cost that industry has refused to assume. However, the cost of treating work-related disabilities is even more expensive, and industry has fought to pass this cost onto the taxpayer.

For example, hundreds of thousands of employees who have been denied workers' compensation wind up applying for disability, which is roughly one-half to two-thirds less than what they would get in compensation funds.

Beginning in 1979, the Social Security Administration began a scandalous policy of denying and cutting benefits to the disabled that resulted in untold suffering and more suicides. There was a huge public outcry and the most obvious excesses were stopped. But still today, an overwhelming number of the American disabled are denied benefits and wind up on welfare assistance—which is one-half to one-third what disability payments would have been.

In spite of the fact that life expectancy has increased more than 25 years since 1900, disease and chronic ailments are on the rise for all age categories. The quality of life for millions of Americans has declined. The high-tech holocaust continues to rob people of their most basic right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

There is no more damaging indictment of the capitalist system than the vicious way it treats the workers it has maimed. There is no more pressing need than for the government to institute a program of free medical care paid for by taxing the giant corporations who contaminate the earth.

The next article will examine the political process that gives free rein to the polluters. The way to solve the environmental crisis will be discussed.

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