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Biden’s COVID Coordinator Is a Shill for Equity Billionaires: Need Communist Leadership for Workers’ Health
USA, December 8—U.S. President-elect Biden named his transition team co-chair, Jeffrey Zients, as Coronavirus Czar and a special presidential counselor. Zients’ real job is ensuring that U.S. capitalists rake in billions. That means millions more patients and healthcare workers will die worldwide. Communist revolution is the only alternative to the relentless capitalist forces that reap such profitable devastation.
A decade ago, Zients helped roll out the Affordable Care Act (ACA) a.k.a. Obamacare. From the start, the ACA was designed to turn the healthcare industry into a pot of gold for private-equity billionaires. “Billions could flow from Washington to Wall Street,” said the New York Times
And flow they did! The Harvard Business Review (October 2019) lauded the significant growth of private investment in “everything from health technology startups to addiction treatment facilities to physician practices.” A similar development is now occurring in the Medicare system. Globally, this is the trend.
Biden’s COVID Czar Serves His Private Equity Buddies
Zients is on leave from the private-equity global holding company Cranemere, where he was the CEO. Cranemere’s Chair, Vincent Mai, makes investments on behalf of the Rockefeller, Harriman and Mellon ruling class families. He served the U.S. ruling class as a former director of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), the prime think tank of U.S. imperialism. Zients is also a CFR member.
Following the pattern set in manufacturing, Cranemere has consolidated medical subcontractors into huge conglomerates. A healthcare comrade correctly complained that even non-profit hospitals were run like any other capitalist business. Many of the extravagant costs of healthcare are dictated by these medical subcontractors.
Capitalism Kills Healthcare Workers, Patients
The results for healthcare workers and patients have been dreadful. For example, Cranemere took a majority stake in NorthStar Anesthesia as part of its “healthcare services acquisition strategy.” NorthStar provides hospitals across the US with over 2,000 anesthesia personnel.
A comrade described how secret negotiations between NorthStar and their hospital caused them and their co-workers to be on-call almost 24/7. Many surgical aides were forced to stay in the hospital while on call. Many worry that this exhausting grind will end in tragic, possibly deadly, mistakes.
When our comrade first reviewed the corporate leadership they worked under, their immediate reaction was, “That’s above my pay grade.” They didn’t see the importance of understanding how big bosses organized healthcare.
We should have no illusions about the enemy. The fight is against the capitalist system, not just our local bosses.
When capitalism goes into crisis, workers cannot escape the repercussions. Racist, sexist, and xenophobic attacks are the first and the most brutal. As the crisis intensifies, individual attempts to escape the devastation become far less likely to succeed. Even mass revolts, as encouraging as they are, cannot offer relief.
Communist revolution is the only alternative.
Workers, not billionaire butchers like Zients, will lead communist health care. Patient care and the science that supports health will truly flourish, freed from the chains of corporate profits.
In communism, masses will be mobilized to work for the common good, not for pay. Nobody and nothing will be “above the pay grade” of the workers.
Science will belong to the masses, not to a limited number of MDs or private equity firms or drug companies or other organizations dominated by capitalists.
Health care facilities will be fully staffed to meet patients’ needs without overworking anyone. Even in pandemics, there won’t be staffing shortages. Communist organization will train people quickly to do the necessary work or to free up others to do it.
During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, many hospitals struggled to eliminate hierarchies. Dr. Joshua Horn reported “free discussion about problems of diagnosis and treatment among doctors, nurses, patients and cleaning staff.” The masses can do even better in the future.
Our party will organize the masses to lead in every aspect of making sure our worldwide working class is healthy. Join us today. Our very lives depend on it!
Respond to COVID-19 Deaths, Suffering and Fear by Building Party for World Communist Revolution
I am an education worker in the United States. In this period, I work from home three days a week and I am supposed to work in the building two days a week. Two and a half weeks ago, Coronavirus entered into the building. We didn’t find out about it until a few days later.
We worked at home for two weeks, and now management has ordered us back in the building. Yes, everyone at work wears a mask and that kind of thing, but it certainly made me do some hard thinking.
As coronavirus spreads around the world, the working class and the poor continue their struggles to survive. The pandemic has killed over 1.56 million people. US capitalists have gotten financial bailouts such as the CARES Act, while people on unemployment have had their benefits cut back.
The inability to humanely distribute COVID-19 vaccines to nations such as India, Brazil and South Africa is a crime against humanity.
People are struggling over what to do. Small and large businesses laid off millions internationally. Logistical companies such as Amazon and gig economy start-ups such as Instacart, have gobbled up thousands of workers as new employees. These people have become meat for destruction in the shredder of overtime work, COVID-19 ravaged warehouses, and strains on individuals’ work, health and finances.
Amazon admits that its workforce has been impacted by COVID, infecting upwards of 20,000 workers. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s boss, is now “worth” $184.4 billion. More people are daring to stand up against the capitalists during this crisis, although many are routinely fired or face harassment.
Other workers and small business owners are being sucked into the anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine movements, which are closely aligned with Donald Trump and the extra-legal paramilitaries such as the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and other fascist elements.
These two tendencies amongst workers constitute conflicting paths for struggle in the current period. The fight for organizing the masses for communism is a great need of today and must be victorious if humanity is to survive and move forward.
We must fight against the deaths, suffering, and fear created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic and political and social crisis it triggered. To build a party of world revolution which will overturn the capitalist and imperialist system and create the beginnings of an international communist system is an honorable and worthwhile goal for this period.
The world’s workers and poor have been mortally wounded. These wounds lay the ground for an International Communist Workers’ Party to build international centers for world communist revolution.
—Red Teacher