MOBILISE UNIONS TO DEMAND: FREE HEALTH
CARE FOR ALL CITIZENS!
20-02-2016 – Step by
step, cut by cut, Australia’s health care system is being ripped from the hands
of working people. Federal “Health” Minister Susan Ley announced a $650 million
cut to Medicare incentive payments as a “Merry Christmas” gift at the end of
last year. It will likely lead to up-front costs for pathology tests, blood and
urine tests, pap smears, imaging and ultrasound services.[1] This
comes on top of 23 medical procedures slated for “review” – read: cut – from
Medicare. But these 23 are just the first of a projected 5700 items in the line of
the razor.[2] Make no mistake;
the aim is not just the abolition of bulk billing, but the complete dismantling
of Medicare, or anything resembling public health care in this country. To say
that the end result will be a user-pays US style “health” system is no
understatement.
Working people should be
under no illusions – the real cause of the savage attacks on basic public
services such as healthcare is not the ideological predilections of the Liberal
Party, for the Labor Party (ALP) and the Greens are offering scant resistance. The
real cause is the deep and ongoing economic crisis of the capitalist system,
which has ravaged the US and Europe since 2008. If Australia has avoided a
Greece or Spain type economic catastrophe, it is due in no small part to
extensive trade links with the still growing socialist led Chinese economy. Red
China’s enormous economy props up, and feeds, sparks of growth in the faltering
“free enterprise” of the West. Yet even China’s vast resources will not be
enough to significantly re-start production on these shores. Consequently,
Australia’s capitalist class and their political servants deem it natural that
ANY social spending which is not directly related to assistance for the
accumulation of private profit for the corporate elite shall be cut, and cut
mercilessly. As has been the case with previous cuts, the latest health care
cuts will disproportionately affect women, pensioners, all those on lower
incomes and their children. It is no less than economic warfare.
There needs to be an
immediate, robust and unrelenting offensive movement, not just to “defend
Medicare”, but for an entirely free and universal health care system. Such
a system must come primarily at the expense of the profits of the banks, mining
companies and other corporate conglomerates, many of which currently escape
paying any tax at all. This movement needs to be led by those with the social
power and class interest to do so – the Trade Unions, which can then draw in
unorganised labour, pro-working class students, pensioners and others. Yet
sitting atop the Unions we find an overpaid and self-satisfied labour
bureaucracy – officials who build their careers and handy superannuation nest
eggs by suppressing, not enabling, workers’ struggle. As ever, the crisis of
the labour movement is the crisis of its leadership – with barely one official
even raising a murmur against the rapidly deteriorating health care system. For
example, take the Queensland Nurses Union Secretary Beth Mohle. Speaking in
relation to a report about the poor performance of Queensland hospitals in
relation to waiting times, Mohle stated that she believed the Australian public
“would be prepared to pay higher taxes to continue with the high quality health
and education services that we have now.”[3] Like
hell !! With the amount of tax working
people already pay, free health care
and education is already justified. This complete lack of perspective of class
struggle gels with a wealthy Union official’s complete distance from the
hardships of the life of working people.
The indifference of the
Union officials, however, only exists as far as working people allow it –
inside and outside the respective Unions. Unions, unlike the governments and
parliaments of the rich, are based on the working class – the funds and
organisation of workers themselves. This is why Union leaderships can be
“pressured” into taking action, given sufficient organisation. The federal,
state and local governments, on the other hand, are but committees for managing
the affairs of the ruling class, to quote a famous figure. They are not
accountable to working people, no matter how many demands are laid at their
feet. Focusing on lobbying them can only lead to paralysis before the campaign
has even begun.
A huge danger for the
campaign against the cuts is that is that it will be railroaded into an effort
to elect an ALP/Greens Federal government, with elections due this year. In
fact, indications are that this perspective has already become dominant.
National rallies against the Medicare cuts have been called for February 20 – a
Saturday. Make no mistake, rallies and demonstrations are necessary. However, a
rally on a Saturday or Sunday means there can be virtually no workplaces that
take industrial action and walk out to join the demonstration. It is the weight
of the workers which will be decisive in this struggle – as in many others. The
ruling class can sustain any number of rallies on a weekend, which involve no
industrial action, in which any number of people attend. Even a rally of millions
on a weekend has no discernible impact on the financial aristocracy, because
such an action is aimed at pleading, even begging, with the government. What
is urgently required is a national campaign of industrial action, up to and
including general strikes. If this was to occur, it would be the
workers who would be bargaining from a position of strength. Plaintive appeals
of “stop the cuts” – to those who are already carrying them out – is profoundly
disempowering.
In practice,
unfortunately, the latter strategy is the one often imposed on actions by
representatives of the ALP, the Greens and Union officialdom. They are
supported in this perspective by some left parties who help organise “These
cuts are killing us” actions. Such left groups would argue that it is necessary
to build a “broad”, “inclusive” movement which can mobilise the most numbers. They
would claim - the more numbers, the more “broad” the political forces, the more
“unity”, the more likelihood of success. Yet this is profoundly mistaken.
Politics does not work by numbers alone, and positively malfunctions where
there is “unity” between progressive and conservative elements. What is
decisive are the two basic classes of capitalist society – labour and capital.
If working people are mobilised alongside, and march side by side with
political forces which do not share their aims – in this case, the ALP, the
Greens and the Union bureaucracy – the movement can only bolster the fortunes
of those pushing to privatise health care. In this case, such a movement will
be used by the more conservative political forces for their aims – the election
of an ALP/Greens government.
Needless to say, an
ALP/Greens government will NOT deliver free health care, or anything
approaching it. Therefore, the campaign for free health care must not be
politically subordinated to those parties, or its allies in the Union
bureaucracy. Working people need to demand free health care without
qualification. They need to demand their Unions mobilise workers independently of
all parliamentary parties and those that serve them. Such a campaign would link
up with the already overstretched nurses and doctors who are still in what
remains of public healthcare. Based on the mobilisation of labour, it could
draw in supporters who rely on, and would politically support a universal
healthcare system – students, pensioners, retirees and others. Such a movement
would then also be in a position to demand public spending on other vital
services such as education and public transport.
In the course of this
struggle, we would do well to recognise the two countries which have the best
free and universal health care systems in the world – the Republic of Cuba, and
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Cuba’s free healthcare system
has long been recognised the world over, and Cuba is renowned for sending
doctors and medical teams overseas to aid impoverished countries. Less well
known, but just as effective, is the universal and free health care system in
the DPRK. Yet these universal healthcare systems come courtesy of their
respective socialist revolutions which overthrew capitalism and consigned it to
the dustbin of history. The victory of socialism will be the ultimate guarantee
of free healthcare.
FOR UNIVERSAL AND FREE HEALTHCARE FOR ALL
CITIZENS!
MARXIST-LENINIST GROUP
(MLG)
PO BOX
66 NUNDAH QLD
4012
www.ML-Group@blogspot.com.au
