Greetings from Mexico here ♦ Growing Politically in El Salvador here ♦ “Healthcare” System is Killing Us here ♦
Warm Greetings from Mexico
I would like to share my gratitude to the ICWP comrades for giving me the opportunity to participate in your international conference experience this December. Sharing and meeting different comrades from other countries was an enriching experience.
It was a time of political, cultural, and ideological growth. I feel very happy about this great invitation and the knowledge that there are many more of us in the struggle. I have read Red Flag for about two years and participated in occasional meetings in this country. I really like its ideology and sharing my feelings.
I want to continue getting to know more about you and participating in more meetings. I feel committed to continuing reading and sharing Red Flag with more people.
Everything for everyone! A world where many worlds fit!
— A Comrade in Mexico
Learning and Growing Politically in El Salvador
I am very happy to have participated in the ICWP conference. For about two and a half years, I have been reading Red Flag and participating in a reading group where we discuss the paper. I am grateful to the comrade who struggled with me.
Now I can say that I am a member of the party. I have already participated in extended meetings and the international conference. The conference represented great growth and political enrichment. I very much enjoyed meeting more comrades and interacting with each other.
Knowing what the other comrades face in different parts of the world mirrors the struggles that one goes through oneself.
I had some concerns that stayed in my mind, but with all that I could observe in the course of this last experience, I was able to resolve them with collective work and at the same time by reading the ICWP web page.
Always in our development and struggle, there are doubts or contradictions that we must learn to overcome. A comrade’s recommendations to read about dialectical materialism and what it means to be a communist have been very helpful to me. I know that I need to learn more. Everything is a new world for me.
I hope to continue to learn and grow politically. To continue with our reading and discussion groups. Continuing to read the Red Flag website and to fight for what we need: the common good for all.
—New Comrade in El Salvador
Read our materials on Dialectical Materialism here.
The “Healthcare” 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 “commodity” 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 industry’s standard practices will bring tears to most people’s eyes.
Consumer’s 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 “managed care” and “cost control” to be most important to the institutions charged with “healthcare.”
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 “health savings accounts” 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 “wanted to walk around the hallway a bit.” 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 “self-medicate.”
But US capitalist “health care” cares more about profits than health.
We have a new communist world to build, and we need a healthy population to do the building!
—Comrade in California (USA)