Cuba’s health system shows what’s possible
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Capitalist politicians, both liberal and conserva tive, argue that taking the profit out of health care stifles innovation. The staggering number of vac cines, cancer treatments, and other medical break throughs made by the Cuban health-care system stands as a sharp repudiation of the assertion that a profit-driven system is best for patients and pro viders.
Working under conditions of scarcity, and under siege by U.S. imperialism, the Cubans have managed to build a system of medical care unlike any other.
The Cuban people don’t have to worry if they will be able to afford a doctor or vital medicines. Medical school is free, unlike the U.S., where doctors often graduate with a huge student debt.
In Cuba, the emphasis is on preventative care, from the health-care system. The political influence of health-care corporations, private insurance companies, and pharmaceutical giants is an obstacle to basic human needs.
Republicans excoriate Democrats for saying that the new bill, especially cuts to Medicaid, will result in people dying, but this is undoubtedly true. People will die, but the GOP doesn’t care as long as their rich paymasters get tax breaks. However, the Democrats have proven that they are not allies in the struggle for a just health-care system. Recently, in California, the Democrats scuttled an attempt to pass a statewide single-payer bill in the state. Democratic leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pe losi, have made it clear that single payer is not going to be part of the discussion.
... Role of police (continued from page 3: “What’s the role of police under capitalism?”)
role by opposing progressive initiatives.
The Fraternal Order of Police and Police Benevolent Association are the largest police unions. The Team sters, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, and the Service Employees International Union also represent police and prison guards. Building labor solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement within the labor movement means challenging the role of police unions and demanding that labor federations cut ties to these reactionary anti-worker organizations.
Revolutionary socialists reject the notion that po lice are a legitimate part of the workers’ movement.
While police may be drawn from the ranks of the working class, they serve the interests of a racist cap italist social order.
It’s the role they play as enforcers of the existing with doctors and nurses working in neighborhoods and workplaces. Cuba’s infant mortality rate is low er than in the U.S. and ranks as one of the lowest worldwide. Life expectancy is 78, among the highest in the Americas.
The Cuban government has famously sent medical aid, including doctors, to war-torn regions and to the care for the victims of natural disasters. Thou sands of Cuban doctors and other medical person nel are currently in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Imagine what benefits there would be to the world if this model of internationalism and concern for human need over greed were applied in the U.S.
— JOHN LESLIE Winning a real alternative to both the ACA and Trump care will require building an independent mass move ment based in the unions and organizations of youth, oppressed nationalities, and women. Health-care work ers, including doctors, who are increasingly wage earn ers and not single practitioners, are natural allies in this struggle.
We must fight uncompromisingly against cuts to cur rent programs as we struggle for a single-payer health plan. Single payer should be seen as transitional to wards a national health system that places the healthcare infrastructure under public ownership. A socialist contribution to the health-care debate must include the clear demand that health care in the U.S. include full pre scription, vision, mental health, and dental coverage. n state and economic set-up that is decisive.
Leon Trotsky, writing about cops in the 1930s, said, “The worker who becomes a policeman in the ser vice of the capitalist state, is a bourgeois cop, not a worker. Of late years, these policemen have had to do much more fighting with revolutionary workers than with Nazi students. Such training does not fail to leave its effects. And above all: every policeman knows that though governments may change, the po lice remains.”
Socialists reject calls for more cops and for “law and order,” since these policies always disproportionate ly target oppressed nationalities and workers. This is why, for example, we must oppose Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s call for adding thousands of more police in Britain in the wake of terror attacks.
We must continue to mobilize and unite the strug gles for justice against police violence and work to expose the links between neo-fascist groups and cops. This means holding the system’s enforcers in blue accountable. n SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 2017 5