In the US, medicine is money: that's the problem with health care

Medicine, or medical care and access to it for the members of society, should not be a business. Like all such services, from the water we drink to the energy we consume they should be public services, not for-profit industries. They are most efficient as a public service. The private sector naturally disagrees and as they control the political parties and the government and the resources that society has, they do what they can to starve any public entity of funds and the means to provide these things. “See, public services are a bureaucratic nightmare” they say as they starve the education, health and transportation system of funds. In countries with socialized medicine you have to wait forever to get to see a doctor they say.

Firstly, this is false although there is some truth to it also. But if there are failings in this system it is because the capitalist class that controls the political and economic life of society refuses to put the necessary resources in to such a public venture because they want it to fail. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that they promote an alternative; the private for profit sector.

I was in Britain not so long ago and discovered that I had not brought enough of my medicine with me. So I head up to the local hospital to try get some pills. They told me I had to go to my sister’s GP as they don’t issue drugs. So I get the bus back down and head to the GP’s office which was just a few blocks away. I get an appointment and wait about an hour or so and get called in. I had told the receptionist what I was there for so he was aware that I needed heart medicine.

We chatted a bit and I told him the medicine and the dosage and that I needed seven day’s worth. So he writes me a prescription and apologizes because I am not an NHS member and will have to pay for the drugs.

“No problem” I tell him

He writes out the prescription and when he’s finished starts rumbling through a file on his desk. He’s mumbling to himself then turns to me:

“I’m sorry about this but because you’re not an NHS member I have to charge for the visit.”

“That’s understandable” I tell him hoping that it wouldn’t be too much.

He’s still fiddling around with these papers becoming a little more agitated..

“I’m sorry” he says again, “I’ve never charged anyone before, I need a bit of a time to find the form.”

Another minute passes, “Oh, to hell with it”, he says, “I can’t find the form, I’m not sure what it looks like I’ve never charged anyone before.”

He eventually gives up and sends me on my way telling me that the chemist is next door and I can get my prescription filled there at a cost of $30.

I am not saying that all of the country is like this. And I know there are serious failings but they are not because socialized medicine is inferior, but because the capitalist class refuse to fund it adequately. If you don’t put gas in a car it won’t run, or if you put low-grade gas in a car it will run poorly. Well, the same for public services.

In the US, for every dollar spent on health care, $20 or more is wasted according to Business Week. “As much as $500 billion of the $2.2 trillion spent on health care in the US is wasted..” the magazine points out. The insurance companies for a start, take a lot of the money. Why we should pay a middleman, which is what an insurance company is, to get medical care is beyond me.

Here in the US, as I have stated before, we live in the belly of the beast. It is the heart of global capitalism. In other nations, the US capitalist class may subdue those that resist its domination of their economy and political lives with the bomb. But they resist such violent methods with their own working class if they can; they have used violence historically, toward the native people, the Africans, the workers that came from Europe, Asian and Latin America as indentured servants or slaves. But we have won some great victories from them so they use the stick when they have to and the carrot when they can; they have to convince their own workers that we are on the same team and foreign workers are our enemies. They divide black from white, women from men, young from old, all in an effort to undermine the potential power of a united working class.

So with us they wage a very powerful ideological war about the merits of capitalism and the market and how we can achieve what we want if we simply “put our minds to it” and that we can “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” like George Bush and other worthless characters do. What nonsense.

It gets harder to do this as they attack the standard of living of their own workers making survival harder. But the propaganda that blames other forces other than the system and their support for it heats up. Immigrants are to blame, people on welfare, lazy workers, Unions.; terrorists around the world who hate us because we're "free".  The British called the American revolutionists terrorists too.

"You've got to show increasingly some way in which the customer can make money" says Omar Ishrak, GE's head of "health care systems business" "Now there's two ways of doing that.  One way is the customers cost goes down.  The other is the customer's revenue goes up."  he says.  He is talking about the hospitals that buy GE's medical products like imaging machines. So they can either reduce wages and services or charge more for them.  That's the problem.

Meanwhile I thought of that doctor and what a different work environment he functions in compared to most doctors in the US---he can focus more on helping sick people as opposed to worrying about whether they can pay or not.