Corn fed empire

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>The answer is 'smash reformism.'  Now, what was the question? 
>
>I occasionally get leftists who tell me we can't have universal health care
>in the U.S. *until capitalism is overthrown.* I point out all the capitalist
>countries that have it (in the OECD it's Turkey, Mexico, and the U.S. which
>don't) then I brace for the argument that the banks and insurance companies
>here are all interlocked and you're really attacking big capital (a worthy
>response)... instead they mumble something about 'who wants to deal with
>western medicine anyway' and wander off.  Or they give the elitist line,
>Americans will never go for that, they're too brainwashed/stupid/bought off
>etc. 
>
>Those who want health care, meanwhile--not just as a political theory but for
>themselves--perk up and ask good questions, happily unaware that there are
>unfulfilled historic preconditions.
>
>Jenny Brown

Why do you think we don't have what "all the capitalist countries" 
have?  What's the difference?  How did the "shadow welfare state" 
come about here, rather than social democracy, and how do we overcome 
it?  What answers do you give to good questions asked by those who 
want health care?

*****   EMBARGOED UNTIL: 12:01 A.M. EDT, SEPTEMBER 30, 2002 (MONDAY)
Mike Bergman                                        CB02-127
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(301) 763-3030/457-3670 (fax)
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e-mail: pio at census.gov                              Quotes & radio sound bites

Health Insurance in America

Numbers of Americans With and Without Health Insurance Rise, Census 
Bureau Reports

The number of people with health insurance rose by 1.2 million 
between 2000 and 2001, to 240.9 million, but at the same time the 
number of uninsured rose by 1.4 million, to 41.2 million, the 
Commerce Department's Census Bureau reported today.

Meanwhile, an estimated 14.6 percent of the population had no health 
insurance coverage during all of 2001, up from 14.2 percent in 2000.

"The percentage of people covered by employment-based health 
insurance dropped a point, to 62.6 percent in 2001," said Robert 
Mills, author of Health Insurance Coverage: 2001. "That was the 
principal cause of  the overall decrease in health insurance 
coverage."...

<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2002/cb02-127.html>   *****

The picture is getting worse yet, not because of 
"Trotskyist"/"Marxist"/whatever rhetoric on health care, as you know. 
Don't you guys have more important enemies to confront than 
left-wingers whose voices you would rather not hear?
-- 
Yoshie

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