In South Africa there’s a popular comedian called Matthias Rath. Here’s one of his jokes:
“Patient: Doctor Doctor, I’m worried about transmitting HIV to my unborn baby.
Doctor: Don’t worry, just have some potatoes. Whatever you do, don’t take any poisonous anti-viral medicine which will actually cause AIDS.”
It’s a screamer eh? Ok, I lied. Matthias Rath is actually a doctor from Germany, not a comedian, and some might also say he’s a serial killer. Not a serial killer in the Harold Shipman way, but his practices have almost certainly led to the deaths of thousands of South Africans.
South Africa is a nation with a massive HIV/AIDS crisis. It is currently estimated that 11% of South Africans are HIV-positive. This means that if you walk down a busy street in South Africa, chances are 1 in every 10 people you see has HIV. This changes by province; in KwaZulu-Natal the rate goes up to 26%. With a disease this widespread, anyone able to market a treatment might end up very rich very quickly and it appears that Matthias Rath also knew this.
Having studied medicine in his native Germany, Rath went into research in California. It was here that he started making claims about the use of high dose vitamins in treatment of cardiovascular disease. He began suggesting that conventional cancer treatments should not be used as they kill patients and that they should instead take Rath’s vitamin supplements. His books developed an impressive readership throughout Europe and he sold lots of interestingly priced vitamins. Despite being criticised and fined throughout Europe for claiming his pills could cure cancer, he developed an impressive following and an impressive bank balance, allowing him to try and break South Africa. Well he broke it alright.
With all guns blazing he filled newspaper pages with his claims. “Antivirals are a conspiracy by the pharmaceutical industry to poison you. Vitamins are the true solution to AIDS. Stop taking your antivirals right now…RIGHT NOW. STOP IT. STOP TAKING THEM. SPIT IT OUT. Now don’t let me catch you doing it again.” Ok, so those weren’t his exact words, but they might as well have been. Soon he was conducting trials, recruiting poor black township residents with promises of money or food. The patients were told to stop taking their antivirals and were instead given high doses of vitamins. Guess what happened. Guess. Everyone was actually fine and they all lived happily ever after. Sorry, typo, what I meant to say was that a considerable number of the study participants quickly deteriorated and died. The South African High Court eventually found that Rath’s trial was illegal. This could have ended up being an unfortunate isolated incident in which a doctor with crazy ideas performed an unethical trial. Thousands of lives may have been saved if one of Rath’s supporters didn’t just happen to be the President of the Republic of South Africa.
And so it came to pass that thanks to Matthias Rath, a country with one of the highest HIV rates in the world was telling people to take African potatoes and garlic instead of antivirals. The country refused to roll out antiviral treatment programmes; they turned down grant money intended for the purchase of HIV medication and even turned down donations of drugs. Presidential advisors recommended banning HIV tests and denied any knowledge of an AIDS epidemic in Africa. President Thabo Mbeki himself repeatedly denied that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS and his health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang repeatedly praised Rath’s work and publicly decried antiviral therapy as being dangerous and counterproductive. Overall it’s estimated that around 330,000 people died unnecessarily in the space of 5 years thanks to the government’s policy on antivirals.
Naturally these policies encountered opposition; the Western Cape province ignored governmental advice and continued to supply antiretrovirals. Groups such as Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) did their utmost to get HIV medication to those in need. This resulted in Anthony Brink, a colleague of Rath, taking TAC to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, accusing them of genocide. In his indictment Brink set out what he believed to be an appropriate punishment for Zachie Achmat, the founder of TAC:
“APPROPRIATE CRIMINAL SANCTION
In view of the scale and gravity of Achmat’s crime and his direct personal criminal culpability for ‘the deaths of thousands of people’, to quote his own words, it is respectfully submitted that the International Criminal Court ought to impose on him the highest sentence provided by Article 77.1(b) of the Rome Statute, namely to permanent confinement in a small white steel and concrete cage, bright fluorescent light on all the time to keep an eye on him, his warders putting him out only to work every day in the prison garden to cultivate nutrient-rich vegetables, including when it’s raining. In order for him to repay his debt to society, with the ARVs he claims to take administered daily under close medical watch at the full prescribed dose, morning noon and night, without interruption, to prevent him faking that he’s being treatment compliant, pushed if necessary down his forced-open gullet with a finger, or, if he bites, kicks and screams too much, dripped into his arm after he’s been restrained on a gurney with cable ties around his ankles, wrists and neck, until he gives up the ghost on them, so as to eradicate this foulest, most loathsome, unscrupulous and malevolent blight on the human race, who has plagued and poisoned the people of South Africa, mostly black, mostly poor, for nearly a decade now, since the day he and his TAC first hit the scene.
Signed at Cape Town, South Africa, on 1 January 2007
Anthony Brink”
Fortunately Rath’s heyday is over in South Africa. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was replaced as health minister and Mbeki was replaced as president by Kgalema Motlanthe, who stated that “the era of AIDS denialism in South Africa is over.” Despite this, a massive amount of damage was done by Rath and the other AIDS dissidents in South Africa. The lack of HIV medication is estimated to have caused 35,000 babies to have been unnecessarily born with HIV and 171,000 preventable HIV infections. Antiviral medication is difficult enough for the poorest to afford at the best of times thanks to prohibitive pricing by the pharmaceutical industry and so extra restrictions are likely to have a devastating effect. Purely for the sake of money and advancing his own career, Rath destroyed thousands of lives and thousands of families across South Africa. In a similar fashion to our own MMR scare, irresponsible claims made with a lack of evidence proved dangerous and the importance of examining evidence is once again demonstrated.
A study/case report/article today published by a medical research group/university/charity revealed that a popular food/lifesaving medicine/controversial activity may cause/reduce risk of cancer/heart disease/stroke. It was found that some people who ate the food/took the medicine/did the activity later went on to develop/did not develop cancer/heart disease/stroke and despite that fact that no link between them has been shown, this newspaper/magazine/blog recommends immediately eating/taking/doing more/less of the food/medicine/activity. This research contradicts previous studies/case reports/articles that have shown the opposite effect, but this article will conveniently forget the results we distorted last week to cause fear and sell more papers/magazines/get more blog hits. This newspaper/magazine/blog also recommends ignoring the advice of your well qualified and experienced doctor/nurse/pharmacist and instead taking all of your medical advice from some journalist looking for a good story. Further handpicked results/inspirational tales/hate speech will follow later in the week to rile up public support/anger/disgust for whoever/whatever/wherever we’re telling you to worship/hate/throw bricks through the window of and campaign outside with poorly spelled placards this week.
The head of the Royal College of Nursing has backed the idea of clean pharmaceutical heroin being made available on prescription to addicts, an idea the SSP has campaigned in favour of for years.
Peter Carter was speaking as the RCN discussed the results of pilot studies conducted last year in London, Darlington and Brighton. The schemes allowed heroin users to inject under supervision in special consumption rooms. The studies found, as several previous schemes have already, that heroin on prescription means users can break away from using illegal dealers, and cut the huge cost of their problem. This in turn cuts crime in the local area massively, as people with drug problems are no longer forced to steal to feed their problem. The amount of crime committed by addicts in the areas being studied was cut by two thirds. Participants in the study were found to have cut the amount they were spending on heroin from £300 a week to £50.
The provision of consumption rooms also reduces the risk of overdoses, and of transmission of diseases like hepatitis or HIV, as their is always access to clean needles. Once users are are taking part in a medical programme their prescription can be gradually reduced to help break their addictions.
Dr. Carter said:
“Addicts can take the drugs there [in consumption rooms] rather than go to school playgrounds or the stairwells of flats. Critics say that you are encouraging drug addiction but the reality is that these people are addicts and they are going to do it anyway. I do believe in heroin prescribing. The fact is heroin is very addictive. People who are addicted so often resort to crime, to steal to buy the heroin. This obviates the need for them to steal.
It might take a few years but I think people will understand. If you are going to get people off heroin then in the initial stages we have to have proper heroin prescribing services.”
A consumption room, where addicts can inject with medical supervision
The idea has traditionally been opposed by those who object to addicts being given heroin at public expense, however, these studies are just the latest that show heroin on prescription can play a major role in ending the huge problems caused by addiction. It’s time to recognise that heroin users are people with serious health problems, and usually have reached addiction as a result of abuse, poverty and hopelessness. Drug addiction is a problem of society, and the war on drugs approach of pretending that it is just an individual choice has clearly failed. Putting the blame on individuals for their own problems simply fails to understand how they have come about, and what can be done to help end them. Treating people with health problems as criminals just makes the situation worse. Heroin on prescription on the other hand is a real step towards helping people end the nightmare of addiction.
The SSP has always stood for what will actually help reduce the harm caused by drugs, rather than blaming individuals for what are social problems. Yet again, study has shown that heroin on prescription will protect health and reduce crime. Reducing the huge profits made from the international heroin trade will also go a huge way to helping undermine the basis of warlords’ power in Afghanistan. It’s time that this SSP policy was implemented in Scotland and beyond.
Doctors, psychotherapists, pharmacologists and others came together to discuss the use of psychedelic, or mind enhancing/altering drugs, and their potential applications in the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress, addiction to harmful drugs and severe depression.
In recent years a number of scientists have finally won the right from the US government to research the effects of psychedelics. This follows years of official prohibition of scientific research, following the drug scares of the 60s. The 60s counterculture that threatened the US establishment was in large part fueled by the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs, and so a massive moral panic helped to drive them underground, preventing scientists from looking at their potential applications in mental health.
Our society uses more drugs than almost any other in history, when we take into account daily stimulants used by millions like coffee, and all the prescription drugs necessary to cope with the unhealthy workload of capitalist society. So the question we have to ask ourselves is, why are some drugs ruled out of bounds by the state? Some illegal drugs, like crack or heroin, clearly have severe impacts on people’s health and lives, whatever you think of the current government policy. But there is no evidence of anyone having died of overdosing on psychedelics, and they have been used societies from every continent for thousands of years.
Drugs prohibition policy has always been driven by anything other than scientific facts about the impacts of different drugs. Drugs are made illegal, and users persecuted, often following media scares, known as moral panics, which are about creating scapegoats for society’s problems. They also serve the agenda of states very well, as they provide a perfect excuse to create huge regimes of high tech police monitoring the population, in theory to stamp out drugs, but in practice very useful for containing dissent. In the case of psychedelics, governments in the 60s were also very concerned about the fact that users who had mind altering experiences began to seriously question the fundamental basis of the racist, capitalist, imperialist societies they lived in. This led to heavy suppression of their use.
The result of this is that for decades scientists have been unable to properly investigate their potential therapeutic uses. But now that is beginning to change, as researchers who can demonstrate they are using rigorously scientific, and safe, procedures are being given limited approval to look once again at psychedelics. Some of their initial findings are fascinating.
Experiments have proved particularly fruitful in treating people with terminal illnesses or undergoing chemotherapy. Patients suffering from end-of-life anxiety are unable to enjoy their last months of life due to severe depression and gruelling impact of some cancer treatments. However, many now credit their participation in experimental trials of psyilocybin, a substance found in over 100 mushrooms around the world, with helping them overcome their depression, and transforming their relationships with family and friends.
As Dr Charles S. Grob, a psychiatrist at UCLA puts it: “Under the influences of hallucinogens, individuals transcend their primary identification with their bodies and experience ego-free states before the time of their actual physical demise, and return with a new perspective and profound acceptance of the life constant: change.”
Art from 2000 BC shows how long mushrooms have been used by different cultures
Or as one patient, Clark Martin, himself a retired clinical psychologist coping with kidney cancer, says: “It was a whole personality shift for me. I wasn’t any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people. You have a feeling of attunement with other people.”
Other studies have been looking again at the potential for MDMA, the chemical compound used for making ecstasy, to be used in treating post traumatic stress disorder. This has taken on particular relevance after the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have traumatised thousands of young people who turned to the military for a job in the US and UK.
One of the leading researchers in this field, Dr. Roland Griffiths, has argued his research could have profound implications for our understanding of ourselves and human history. He argues that the fact the experience of altered states is so widespread throughout history and across the world, as well as in his own experiments, points to the possibility that they are evolutionarily normal. That is, these experiences have been a normal part of human life for the whole of our history, and may have given us an evolutionary advantage. The controlled use of psychedelics by many societies may have promoted altruism, a lack of selfishness and commitment to supporting others. These are all things that would have helped groups of humans survive in the past, even if capitalist society does not find them to be useful traits, and represses drugs that promote them.
What all this underlines is that humans as a species have always used drugs, and always will. In the 20th century, as new technologies and more advanced societies enhanced the power of states to control their people, a new phase opened up in the relationship between people and drugs, in which governments and the mass media took on the arbitrary power to ban some drugs and promote others, persecuting some users and allowing the manufacturers of others to become fantastically wealthy global corporations. What we urgently need to do is to try and talk openly, honestly, and scientifically about our societies’ use of drugs, and examine which ones can be used beneficially, which do not cause real problems, and how collectively we can reduce harm. Indeed, much current research into psychedelics has focused on how they can be used to help break users’ dependence on much more harmful drugs like heroin.
But progress can only happen when governments accept that the irrational, unscientific “war on drugs” has been a failure. Sadly, in the UK there’s no sign of this happening, especially after the mephedrone scare, the first full on drugs moral panic of our generation. Less well known is that until 2005, whilst dried and prepared magic mushrooms were illegal, it was not against the law to harvest and distribute fresh ones. But then, the government classified them as a Class A substance, officially claiming they were as dangerous as crack or heroin. Good one, chumps.
Bonus: In a TED talk, Dr. Roland Griffiths discusses his work
While I was writing this article, I tried to think of the things that are generally offensive in 2010. I invite you to ask yourself the same question I did – what would you be offended by? Racism? Sexism? Maybe homophobia? Now imagine you were to see a young lady on the bus discreetly breastfeeding her baby. It’s a sad fact that in 2010 there are still people out there who are disgusted when a woman chooses to feed her baby in the healthiest way possible. This may well have come as a shock to Amy Wootten, a young mother from Bristol. She was kicked off a bus into the rain because she refused to stop feeding her daughter when a passenger complained. Apparently the passenger was offended by the tiny bit of breast shown by Ms Wootten and would have preferred her daughter to go hungry.
Humiliating incidents like this only serve to prevent mothers from breastfeeding their babies despite the health benefits to both mother and child. Breastfeeding reduces the risk of cot death, strengthens the baby’s immune system, reduces the baby’s risk of diabetes and reduces the mother’s risk of breast and ovarian cancers. Breastfeeding also promotes bonding between mother and child and, unlike formula milk, is totally free! For the sake of both mum and baby, I think we could all tolerate a little bit of breast being on show.
Thankfully, the law in Scotland is on the right side. Women are free to breastfeed anywhere they like in Scotland and anyone preventing them can be fined. Unfortunately for Amy Wootten, this law does not apply in England and in Scotland we still have the problem of mothers feeling uncomfortable. Attitudes are changing for the better but unfortunately there are still cases like that of Amy Wootten to deter women from breastfeeding.
We’ve all heard the horror stories from the US about women being turned away when trying to access contraception because their mental religious doctors or pharmacists have taken it upon themselves to decide what women should or shouldn’t do with their own bodies. But did you know the same thing happens here?
The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) is to take over the regulation of pharmacists later this year, and under its new code, pharmacists with strong religious principles will still be able to continue to refuse to sell or prescribe products if they feel that doing so would contradict their beliefs.
Err, what about women’s beliefs and choices about what we do with our own bodies? It’s a good question, and one Janine Deeley had to ask when her pharmacist recently refused to fill her prescription for the contraceptive pill.
I said it was not against my religion and I did not see why I should have to go to another chemist or come back at a later date for a different pharmacist to dispense it.
I was angry and I was confused.
Rightly so – it is infuriating, and very confusing! Pharmacists and doctors refusing to provide women with abortion services or emergency contraception is downright wrong, but this is a whole new level of mental… what is up with these people that want to stop women from preventing unwanted pregnancy in the first place? W. T. F?!
Against the odds, President Obama was last night able to get his healthcare reforms through Congress.
Obama-fans everywhere are ecstatic, declaring a fantastic victory. And let’s not be a total wet blanket. Around 30 million Americans with no health insurance will now get some, although unless you’re very poor or very old you’ll be forced to pay for it yourself. And it will become harder for insurance companies to cheat people out of insurance they’ve paid for by claiming that they had a “pre-existing condition.”
But as Leftfield has already pointed out, there are a whole host of problems with this new legislation, and it is far from an attack on the FUCKING EVIL health insurance companies, in fact it will probably end up making them MORE money.
Do these people live in the same Universe as us?
Of course, try telling that to the Republicans and the absolutely mental Tea Party protesters. Every single Republican voted against the bill, and Te Partyers gathered outside Congress to shout racist and homophobic abuse at representatives, as well as actually spit on them.
A key part of the success of the bill was the commitment given by Obama to sign an executive order that would continue the proud American tradition of restricting abortions to those that can afford them, by not allowing public funds to be spent on helping poor women excercise their reproductive rights (*facepalm*). This helped win over anti-abortion Democrats.
But the real reason is that Democrats were afraid that if Obama couldn’t get these proposals through he would begin to look a bit useless, and so, by extension, would they.
Views on the left about the new laws are mixed. Michael Moore, who can be grating at times with his Obama bigging-up, wrote a pretty honest letter on the subject here. It still hails the bill as a big step forward, but he’s at least honest enough to admit that the US STILL doesn’t have universal healthcare, and a big fight still has to go on to get Americans to have nearly as good healthcare as we do in the UK.
Dr Margaret Flowers
But personally, I tend to lean more towards the position of Dr Margaret Flowers, one of the leaders of Physicians for a National Health Programme. In her piece she writes that, despite the new restrictions and regulations on the health insurance industry. they are rich enough and politically powerful enough to get round them. You only have to look at the crappy proposals they got Obama to accept to see their power. There is no way to fix privatised healthcare, it is fundamentally evil and wrong. This bill is just polishing a turd.
Americans: It’s not rocket science. We’ve managed it since 1945. Get yourselves an NHS!
“As this passes, the public will be told it is a solution. They will be told to wait and see how it works when it is implemented in 2014. In the meantime, people will continue to suffer, go bankrupt, or die of preventable causes. This is unacceptable.
We want health CARE reform. Health insurance reform makes no sense. Health insurance is very regulated but they are rich enough and clever enough to evade regulation. We will not support health insurance reform: it is a waste of time, money, and human life.
If we want real reform, it isn’t going to be pretty. It can’t be brought in through the back door or by tweaking. We will have to take on a very powerful industry that currently owns the White House, Congress, and the media. But work for anything less is a waste of time. The smallest increment of change that will be effective is to change to publicly funded health care.
It is not going to be another 10 years or 50 years before we get real reform if this bill fails. The single payer movement is growing. We can organize and push for real reform. But we must stand strong and united on our principles. We must put single payer on the table. It won’t happen any other way.” -Dr. Margaret Flowers.
Still, if we all get nothing else from this bill, this headline might just make it all worth it:
Bonus: Short film takes on one of the many bastard health insurance companies:
Remember when the whole world seemed to feel the same way as Randy Marsh? It’s only just over a year since the US exploded with excitement at the idea that Barack Obama’s election meant that real change was coming to America.
But what has actually happened? Obama has been the latest of a series of governments elected on a wave of hope, only to disappoint their supporters. From the SNP Scottish Government to President Lula in Brazil to New Labour, people have learned again and again that promises of “change” are hollow unless those elected are really ready to fight the powerful forces that keep things the way they are.
In the first of a series exposing the bullshit promises of political fakers, Leftfield sets out to investigate the real record of the Obama Presidency so far. The best place to start seems to be the greatest battleground that the right has tried to defeat him on: healthcare reform.
If you did Higher Modern Studies, or you’ve seen Michael Moore’s brilliant ‘Sicko’, then you’re probably well aware the US isn’t a good place to get sick. Almost all hospitals and doctor’s surgeries are privately-owned profit making companies. They charge huge sums for life saving treatment, which people pay for by taking out insurance policies. The insurance companies and the healthcare companies form an unholy alliance that pours huge sums of money into the campaigns of all Presidential and Congressional candidates, making sure that both the Democrats and the Republicans continue to uphold their business interests.
Obama: Let down
Around 15% of Americans have no access to any kind of health insurance. That doesn’t sound like a lot until you realise it’s 46 million people. Far more people are “underinsured”, that is they can’t afford full insurance for everything that might happen to them. And, as Sicko so powerfully shows, even those with insurance are regularly cheated when insurance companies move the goalposts to try and avoid paying for treatment that is included within policies.
Insurance companies are some of the most publicly hated institutions in the US, precisely because people know that they care only about profit, and cheat thousands out of their right to life. Not content with this, the insurance and health companies have years been lobbying European governments to try and undermine socialised medicine over here, and so expand their potential market. A lot of the attacks on the NHS in the UK have received political support from these same companies.
Some limited numbers of people do get government help with their healthcare in America. War veterans get support. And there are also two government programmes, Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare is a federal (that is, provided by the national government) programme providing health insurance to the elderly and certain special categories of disabled people. Medicaid is a programme administered by the different states, but part funded by the federal government, that provides some means-tested help to poor people. Being poor however is no guarantee of support: an estimated 60% of Americans living in poverty do not receive Medicaid, because they don’t meet the required criteria.
One of the major problems in the US is that there are so many different programmes that provide health insurance-you can take out a policy with a company, have a programme through your employer, or a host of other options. It adds up to huge amounts of bureaucracy and costs to patients. 31% of the cost of healthcare in the US is spent on administration and bureaucracy.
An estimated 100, 000 Americans a year die because they couldn’t afford proper healthcare. Healthcare costs the individual more in the US than in any other country in the world, which shows how absurd it is to oppose a fairer system if it would mean raising taxes: they’re already paying way over the odds! Medical debt is a factor in 62% of American personal bankruptcies, as people struggle to pay the money required to keep their families alive. As a whole, the US spends more of its total income on healthcare costs than any other United Nations member apart from East Timor.
The USA is the only industrialised country on Earth that doesn’t recognise healthcare as a right, and provide universal access to free healthcare. When Obama came to power, many dared to hope that the US was about to catch up with what Britain was able to achieve in 1945, and establish universal healthcare.
Tea party protestors: Mental
Obama has made healthcare reform a major focus of his Presidency. In the process, the right wing has gone absolutely bananas, accusing him of being a socialist. Looking at the Tea Party crazies, it seems like what he wants must be at least a bit good if these people are against it. The stakes are definitely high: the right has won every battle on healthcare reform in the US since the ’40s.
There are two different versions of a healthcare reform bill that have gone through Congress, one passed by the House of Representatives and one through the Senate. The Senate bill will probably form the basis of the final laws, if they get passed.
All through the process of putting together his proposals, Obama has kept his door open to insurance, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, meeting with them time and again to make sure, behind the scenes, and away from all the “socialism” bullshit, the capitalist healthcare industry was still happy with what he was proposing.
The Obama proposals will indeed extend health insurance to the uninsured-by forcing them to buy expensive private insurance or face a legal penalty. Obama has compared it to forcing drivers to buy a driver’s licence. Although initially there was a plan to set up a publicly run health insurance company, that was killed off by the right in Congress. Even if it had been set up, it was estimated it would only have helped 2% of Americans with their healthcare costs.
Obama has also made a big deal about how his proposals will stop insurance companies discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions. What this means is that when you get sick, insurance companies employ their own doctors who try to prove that you were already sick at the time you took out the policy, so they can avoid paying for your care. However, Obama’s plan won’t ban this. Instead, you’ll just pay up to 50% more. Oh, that’s ok then.
Part of the concessions made to insurance companies and the right in order to get something passed included scrapping a lot of regulation that currently tries to force them to behave themselves. Insurance companies will also be allowed to move their base of operations to states with the least consumer protection.
Other concessions to the right include the exemption of abortion from coverage under health plans, and the fact that undocumented migrants to the US will receive no coverage.
Effectively, the law, if passed, will force Americans to fork out more money to insurance companies, increasing their stranglehold over healthcare. At the same time, an “expert panel” is going to be appointed to try and “slash costs” in Medicare, i.e. try and reduce the quality of care the programme provides.
But the greatest scandal of all is the so-called “Cadillac tax.” A minority of workers in the US who are in jobs that are still well unionised have been able to force employers to provide “expensive” health insurance, that is health insurance that provides more money for healthcare than more basic policies. Obama proposes to put a 40% tax on these policies to pay for his reforms, taking away hard won benefits from struggling workers. The unions had promised to fight this proposal tooth and nail, but in January Obama pulled union leaders into the White House for a private meeting where he bullied them into accepting this outrageous proposal. In return they got a slight raising of the threshold required for this tax to kick in. However, the overall result will be that less employers will provide good health policies, forcing more workers to buy private insurance.
I see what you guys did there!
The so-called “Cadillac” policies aren’t even that great. Often, they aren’t more expensive because they provide better care, but because the private insurance companies have calculated that workers in dangerous industries, or older people or whoever are greater insurance risks, and so charge higher premiums.
The whole healthcare system in the US is incredibly complex and difficult to understand. Obama’s proposals are also really complex, and difficult to fathom. But the main upshot of them is that little will change for the better, and several things will change for the worse. Weakening and cutting the existing better health plans, they will force more people to buy private insurance out of their own pocket. In the process, billions of dollars will be transferred from the working class to insurance companies.
They do nothing to address the elephant in the room-insurance companies are hugely profitable entities that have massive control over the political process. The idea that the American health system represents free enterprise and competition is completely wrong, because these companies are big enough and powerful enough to operate as cartels, and completely control working class Americans’ access to life saving care.
A lot of the weakness of the final proposals has to do with the weakness of unions in the US. The fact that there is no socialised medicine is a major factor in why they are so weak. For 30 years unions have been forced into defensive battles against employers. Instead of fighting for higher wages, they’ve been fighting to try and prevent companies getting out of their obligations to provide healthcare for their employees, which effectively means a wage cut as workers have to pay more for essential help. As a result, wages haven’t risen seriously for decades, and union membership has collapsed. Union bureaucrats are so tied into the Democratic party as they only game in town they are willing to concede on what were once declared to be lines that wouldn’t be crossed, like the “Cadillac tax”.
Depressed yet? Looking at how all the enthusiasm of millions of working class Americans has been squandered by Obama’s sell out to corporate healthcare could well turn many away from attempting to bring about political change.
A protestor demanding Single Payer
But there is a silver lining to the cloud. The insanity of the current debate has galvanised a whole series of grassroots campaigners to fight for what, to the rest of us, seems blatantly obvious. A single payer system, i.e. all healthcare costs being paid for by the state, as happens in Europe, with the NHS, and in virtually every country with governments that have half a brain cell.
Radical trade unionists have been at the forefront of this battle. The Labor for Single Payer Campaign has correctly recognised the fight for an American NHS as one of the greatest battles that must be won if unions and the working class are to stand a chance of making any progress. Last year they forced the AFL-CIO (which is a bit like the American version of the TUC or STUC) to support the demand for single payer healthcare. Unfortunately, the AFL-CIO has not followed up this call with actual campaigning, or by putting demands on Obama. This just shows the need for socialists and radicals in the trade union movement to fight all the harder for control of their unions, to try and force them to take a fighting stance.
Doctors all across the US have come out in support of the campaign as well. Organised by the Physicians for a National Health Programme campaign, they have brought a lot of attention to the issue in the media.
One of the most prominent campaigning doctors is Margaret Flowers MD. In his State of the Union speech in January, Obama called for anyone that had a better idea for reform than his own to come forward. In response, Dr Flowers, a pediatrician from Baltimore, tried to hand deliver a letter outlining the case for Single Payer to the White House. The security guards turned her away, saying they couldn’t accept hand delivered letters. What they left out, of course, was unless you represent the insurance industry, in which case you’ll get invited in to meet White House staff.
Independent socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, who has had some contact with the SSP in the past, did introduce a bill proposing to extend Medicare to all Americans, and establish a single payer system for the US. Predictably, it was voted down. However, similar proposals look like having a good chance of passing in Sanders’ home state of Vermont. And the state of California’s State Assembly has passed Single Payer plans on several occasions, only to have them vetoed by Governator Schwarzenegger.
The proposal for a Single Payer health system is hardly radical stuff, or the final shape that we’d see healthcare being delivered if there was a socialist system. But even this first baby step in the right direction hasn’t been made in the US yet. The emergence of massive grassroots campaigns for decent, state provided healthcare is the first real sign of potential progress in decades.
Remember 1998? It was the year of Titanic, it was the year Google was founded and it was the year George Michael was found doing naughty things in a toilet. It was also the year in which The Lancet, one of the world’s most respected medical journals, published an article that seemed to show a link between the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccination and autism. The world went mental. Suddenly the papers were filled with headlines about how your healthy toddler was almost certainly going to develop this disorder the second the needle went in. In 2002 alone, 1257 articles were published about the scare. Thousands of worried parents stopped their children from getting the jag, deeming it to be too great a risk. What happened? By 2008, the country was in the grip of a mumps epidemic and measles was declared endemic in the UK for the first time in 14 years. What must have been a very difficult decision for parents to make could have been made a lot easier by this week’s news. The report was rubbish.
The Flawless Logic Behind the MMR Scare
The Lancet has made a full retraction of the article, the report’s lead researcher, Dr Andrew Wakefield, is facing a General Medical Council tribunal and the newspapers’ ten year run of scare stories has been made to look a bit silly. While the medical community has known for quite some time that there is absolutely no evidence of a link between MMR and autism, the newspaper scare stories kept the fear alive. Why? Because fear sells papers. Never mind the potential damage to people’s lives, the babies killed by measles, the old lady who dies because she’s scared to take her blood pressure tablets – readers are scared of what vital information they could be missing by not buying the paper. Pick up any copy of the Daily Mail or Take a Break and turn to the health section. Every day something different is giving you cancer, a different medication is apparently unnecessary or a new treatment is going to kill you. Its irresponsible reporting and it can damage lives. These articles aren’t written by doctors, they’re written by journalists and cobbled together from hearsay, taken out of context and bent to suit their message. No-one wants to hear about the 19,999,999 people whose lives were saved, let’s hear about the one person whose hair fell out! (and whose life was also saved, but that bit isn’t important) This is what capitalism is about: make money at any cost. Its easy to get taken in by newspapers and magazines pretending to care about your health but they just want you to stay scared enough to keep buying their rag. The whole MMR scare could have been over years ago if it wasn’t for the fact that it sold papers. Check out kill-or-cure.heroku.com for a full list of what the Daily Mail says will either cause or cure cancer and you’ll soon see that either they aren’t to be believed or we’re all going to die pretty soon. And don’t forget that if you ever do worry about biscuits causing cancer, the best person to ask is your doctor or pharmacist. If only That’s Life magazine asked them, some more kids might be alive today.
These people used to control the United States’ nuclear weapons.
From our American correspondent, Andrew Weir.
So. Healthcare, eh?
Since I got to the US, I’ve been trying very hard not to be “that Brit” (and “that commie Brit” come to that), who goes around saying “Well, with the National Health Service, things work much better than this. You know, you guys really should just socialize your healthcare system as soon as you can.” Doing that would be a bit smug and rude, frankly.
However one thing that a Brit is struck by is the things that are said here by certain right-wing politicians in criticism of the British NHS. Now god knows the NHS is not above criticism. It suffers creeping bureaucratization (I speak as one who briefly worked as an NHS bureaucrat!), but more than that, the outsourcing/privatization drive that it has been subjected to in recent years has increased the tendency (which “socialized” medicine should not show) to aim for profitable operation rather than most efficiently healing the sick. The NHS is also chronically underfunded (most Brits take this as being not too surprising; looking after the health of all sixty million of us is a big undertaking).
The NHS. If it was a biscuit, it would probably be chocolate digestive. Lovely lovely chocolate digestives.
But these sort of criticisms are not the criticisms that are raised here by right-wing politicians. No, the sort of thing they say is that:
Patients have to go in front of panels to determine whether they are “worthy” of treatment.
Steven Hawking would be dead now if he was British.
OK, Steven Hawking is British, but he only got treatment because he’s a famous physicist.
NHS doctors live in penury on miserly state-bureaucrat salaries.
All of these statements are false. But they’re more than false, they’re stunningly blatantly false from the point of view of anyone who has actually grown up with the NHS. Even the most hardened libertarian-capitalist ideologue (and the UK does have a couple) would agree that these statements are false.
Now my point in this note is not so much to call these people out as liars; lots of other people have done that (although people need to continue to do it).
My point is more to say that, if these people are making these completely unresearched statements that can be shown to be completely untrue — what reason is there to believe them about anything else at all? Is there any reason at all to believe what they say about Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, the “War on Terror”, the nature of democracy, the need for anti-trade-union legislation, the need for public sector cuts during a time of recession, etc. etc. etc.?
Or is it more likely that, just as they lie about the NHS, they are systematically lying about all of the above things as well?
We’ve all heard the horror stories from the US about women being turned away when trying to access contraception because their mental religious doctors or pharmacists have taken it upon themselves to decide what women should or shouldn’t do with their own bodies. But did you know the same thing happens here?
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