Healthcare for Profit or for the Masses here ā¦ Healthcare System is Killing us here ā¦ Vigilantism Means Real Enemy Isnāt Targeted here ā¦
Capitalist Healthcare Is Organized for Profit Only Communist Revolution Can Keep the Masses Healthy
USA, January 5ā Israeli forces destroyed the last hospital in Northern Gaza in December 2024. Many more will now die. Israel and the US media claimed it was a Hamas terrorist command center and therefore āself-defense.ā
The charges against Luigi Mangione for allegedly killing UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, on December 4th have been upgraded to first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism. We also see healthcare corporations denying care and killing patients, but thatās not called terrorism. Why?
Healthcare is supposed to help and heal people. But that is not why it was developed during capitalismās early industrial revolution. It was developed to keep the wheels of production turning when urban conditions were crowded, polluted, and rife with infection. Sanitation, clean air, food hygiene, and domestic cleanliness were all missing from the physical living environment.
The means of production are mostly privately owned. So are most insurance companies. The requirement of society in capitalism is to ensure wage earnersā efforts yield profits for the owners of capital.
At the heart of the healthcare debate is that those who need it most are the least able to pay. Internationally, many people donāt get formal healthcare at all.
The rules for healthcare are changing. Capitalists make the rules to benefit themselves. Some who favor commodifying healthcare at the same time argue that the cost of providing care for aging populations is unaffordable. Meanwhile they work to create demand for their healthcare products among those who are essentially healthy. There is shrinking profit in healthcare.
Major corporations have stepped in to replace public health programs. They are outsourcing the workforce to cheaper labor markets globally. The service industry of healthcare is becoming a medical-industrial complex. That is, businesses become entwined in social and political systems or institutions creating or bolstering a profit economy. Socialized healthcare is not profitable, and profit-makers are influencing governments. Insurance companies have the legal right to deny healthcare.
The US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee released a report in December 2024 on āThe injury-productivity trade off.ā It described how Amazonās obsession with speed creates uniquely dangerous warehouses. It concluded that Amazon executives put profits ahead of the health and safety of its workers, ignoring recommendations that would reduce injuries. Amazon of course disagreed. It employs about one third of all warehouse employees in the US and accounts for more than half of all warehouse injuries.
A 2019 delegation of US healthcare workers wrote an article for the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, āBehind Cubaās Healthcare Curtain.ā Cuba has a high ratio of primary care doctors to patients. All healthcare is free. Their policy relies on prevention and active community participation. But Cuba still suffers from lack of resources due to embargos and loss of support from other countries. Its socialized system is not communist. It relies on exporting doctors to other countries for a fee.
Communismās goal is the massesā wellbeing. There wonāt be profit or money. Instead of a few doctors, many will learn and teach medicine and treat disease. Patients and their families will be part of the healthcare team. People with advanced medical knowledge will teach many, and also clean bedpans. Those who once only cleaned bedpans will learn medicine.
There will be less disease. Without wage slavery, society will be based on collectively meeting everyoneās needs, not competition. Relations and food will both be healthy. Everyone will be encouraged to participate in physical activity.
No capitalist reform will achieve the healthcare the masses need and deserve. Only communism, eliminating capitalist exploitation and imperialist war, can do that.
In Gaza, hospitals, healthcare workers and outside aid have been destroyed and denied. Still, the masses there are showing principles of communist society in helping each other with what resources they have.
Israel, the US, and other governments have changed the rules of healthcare using the military-industrial complex to promote fascism. Acts of āterrorismā are subject to the rules of profit making. If you make a profit, it is not terrorism. Netanyahu and Biden are not called terrorists, but Mangione is. Socialized medicine is a reform that can no longer be sustained under capitalism.
Capitalists are fearful amid their drive to make profits from healthcare. That is why they are labelling Mangione a terrorist. They know that people are angry at the system. We can organize people to know what communism is. It is not vigilante justice that changes this. It takes a mass communist movement to make change.
The āHealthcareā System Is Killing Us
I recently reconnected with M, an old friend. M shared that she had been crying over the death of yet one more old friend, due to unnatural causes. M had three family members die from cancer, and three old friends die from complications of diabetes, all in the past ten years. We resolved to try to avoid becoming one of those sad statistics.
Heart attacks, cancer, and diabetes affect many of the poorest in the working class. Lack of good healthy food in the inner cities and Indigenous reservations make these generational problems. Cheap ācommodityā foods contain unhealthy levels of salts, sugars, white flour, and fats. There are more toxins in the air, the water, and the soil.
A closer look at the health industryās standard practices will bring tears to most peopleās eyes.
Consumerās Research magazine reported that, starting in the 1990s, patients who had surgery and women who had given birth, found that their insured hospital stays were cut down to one or two days. Previously, doctors made the decision to admit and watch post-surgical and post-partum mothers in the hospital. But the last four decades have found the practice of āmanaged careā and ācost controlā to be most important to the institutions charged with āhealthcare.ā
Deaths and unnecessary trauma result from lack of care and unforeseen complications after discharge from the hospital. Doctors find themselves trapped by the system, due to the cost of insurance and the rising costs of hospital stays and services.
New programs to address health insurance costs have brought their own troubles. Families, seniors, and young people have trouble paying for enough coverage. In the 1990s, a system of āhealth savings accountsā was created. People could save money in an account strictly for medical expenses. This led, in practice, to unnecessary tests, drugs, and physical therapy.
The healthcare industry makes money by either overcharging for procedures or billing for services never delivered. While in the hospital, post-surgery, I was asked if I āwanted to walk around the hallway, a bit.ā This ten-minute stroll added close to $200 to the total bill! Likely, the same was true of the oral painkillers requested, because the IV medications made me violently ill.
There is surely a better way to care for the people in one of the wealthier countries on the planet?
A simple, direct system that would enroll all people at birth, follow them as they grew and developed, and address problems as they were found. Any variation from what is healthy, and the health care workers would perform tests and look for healthy solutions promptly. This system would address mental problems as well, leading to less violence in homes and workplaces. There would be less use of alcohol and using street drugs to āself-medicate.ā
But US capitalist āhealth careā cares more about profits than health.
We have a new communist world to build, and we need a healthy population to do the building!
āComrade in California (USA)
Vigilantism ends up with the real enemy not being targeted
I would like to respond to the article āVigilantism Wonāt End Capitalist Healthcare or Any Workersā Problemsā in the last issue of Red Flag.
Luigiās actions may appear to reflect a lack of confidence in the working class. However, I think this is a very presumptuous statement. Rather, his actions seem to reveal frustration with the ruling class and a sense of helplessness shared by him and many working-class people. Perhaps it isnāt so much a lack of confidence as it is a lack of knowledge about what the collective masses can achieve.
As the saying goes: āNever attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance.ā This is why the Red Flag must continue to be distributedāto enlighten the people and foster class consciousness. People already feel that every aspect of society is crippled by the motive of profit, but few understand why this is or what can be done about it.
The violent acts we see are often a response to the capitalist system failing the working class. However, vigilante justice is dangerous to society. Celebrating it can lead to chaos, blurring the lines of justice. This has the potential to result in some of the most damaging outcomes, such as revolutionary groups turning on one another, as seen during the Cultural Revolution in China.
Vigilantism may begin as an expression of valid frustration and anger but often does not end with the real enemy being targeted. It risks spiraling into indiscriminate violence that harms the broader movement and underminesĀ itsĀ purpose.
The issue with viewing the movement toward communism solely through the lens of dismantling structures opposing the working class is that it fails to address the systemic flaws of capitalism. It does not foster an environment capable of sustaining and uplifting a lasting society.
Justice should not be based on revenge but on creating a society where everyoneās material conditions are improved. The revolution must have well-defined goals focused on enhancing the material conditions of the working class. It must work methodically toward achievingĀ thoseĀ goals.
āNew comrade in the struggle