Health Care Marchers Welcome Communist Ideas
SEATTLE (USA), July 25— “Finally!” said J. She had just spotted the ICWP sign “Fighting to reform the capitalist healthcare system is a waste of time. Healthcare workers and patients need communism to create a healthy future!”
Comrades brought Red Flag to “Medicare for All” (M4All) marches and rallies here and in California. We said that capitalism can never provide decent, non-racist, non-sexist healthcare for the masses. We opposed the M4All organizers, liberals and socialists, who tout “Medicare for All” as the solution to deadly capitalist healthcare.
J was visiting Seattle from the San Francisco Bay Area. She had come to the rally to meet “comrades.” She held the sign, grabbed a copy of Red Flag, and had us take a picture. Within minutes, she had forwarded it to three friends. She took half a dozen papers to read and circulate to her friends and partner.
We texted her two articles about the communist fight against racism at Boeing. Later she responded: “Thank you so much!!! I read the issue you gave me and I loved it!” She has joined the ICWP Healthcare WhatsApp group.
As speakers droned on, claiming that Medicare for All is the answer to expensive, unequal healthcare, we talked with participants who weren’t so convinced.
Many conversations went beyond just blaming capitalism—though that’s the truth. People were interested in our ideas about how communist healthcare will create a healthier future.
D moved to Seattle from South Carolina five years ago. He was excited to talk to us after browsing through Red Flag. He came to the rally precisely to gather information like this. He considered it a bonus to learn about the communist fight against racism at Boeing and about a society without money.
A woman petitioning for M4All was interested in how public healthcare programs worldwide are increasingly subcontracting to private corporations, often private equity firms. More than half of the revenue of the largest “non-profit” U.S. healthcare plan, Kaiser Permanente, goes to private, for-profit subcontractors.
She is from England. She told us that the National Health Service does the same thing. Neither she nor D was surprised that the so-called public plans are just another way to generate profits for the ruling class.
Communist revolution will eliminate these profit-hungry racist exploiters and their money system. It will let us build a new society where everything, including health care, is produced and shared according to need.
ICWP Will Mobilize Communist Masses to Guarantee Public Health
Communist society will employ science unfettered by the profit motive. It will primarily organize active masses to assure a healthy society. Rather than relying on elites, masses everywhere will actively participate in providing collective healthcare and advancing science.
Communism will open up access to healthcare and mobilize masses to do what is necessary for public health. The Chinese communists mobilized a million and a half peasants to interrupt the life cycle of the deadly “snail disease” in the late 1950s.
In communism, we will learn from the successes (and the errors) of models like this on a massive scale for all healthcare.
Real Progress Possible: ICWP Must Grow
Comrades in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles distributed over 175 copies of Red Flag at the marches and rallies there.
At the suggestion of Seattle comrades, a friend attended the rally in Portland. An East Coast healthcare worker was unable to attend one there. But she is inviting co-workers to a BBQ and circulating recent issues of Red Flag, pointing out the articles on communist healthcare.
The Seattle collective used this mobilization to reconnect with friends, one of whom is studying public health. We plan to ask them to join the Healthcare WhatsApp group and to attend our own August BBQ.
Amidst the global pandemic and the crisis in US health care, it has become clear that this issue is a gateway to communist struggle around many others. More people than we may realize are open to embracing the all-encompassing need for communism.
SEATTLE (USA), July 27—Rally in Westlake Park remembers Kaloni Bolton and denounces medical racism. Kaloni, 12, sought treatment for asthma at a Renton, WA Urgent Care facility. She was sent elsewhere, waited in the car for over 30 minutes, then went into cardiac arrest. She died two days later. In communism, health care system will serve the masses, not profits.
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