But that doesn't mean you and many others won't in the future . As people age they find that they would prefer to having an attendant at home rather than being put in a nursing home, for instance. Disability is the only minority which anyone can join.
>But leaving that aside, what I worried about is that Judy is too
>optimistic, positive, and lacks the political cynicism required to see
>when disability policy is being manipulated for the benefit of and
>from the interest of established power. In this case, what I can see
>is the transfer and expansion of the corporatization of health care and
>social service delivery systems through a myriad of companies in the
>business. In other words the whole healthcare-industrial complex of
>drug companies, dme manufacturers, healthcare supplies, nursing homes,
>hospitals, and HMOs.
This is part of the GATT deal -- exporting the US health care model to western Europe and beyond as you describe below.
>
>The connection with the WB goes like this (pure neoliberalism). Making
>this US styled healthcare industrial complex `accessible' to
>`developing' economies, while insisting these economies `reform' by
>dismantling any socialized or government run facilities, and turning
>them over on the cheap to US corporate healthcare---making that
>process the condition of WB financial support. The other methods might
>be to have developing countries' nationalized funding cut off from
>community clinics, rural doctors, etc and turned over to US styled HMOs
>to make the `service delivery' more `efficient'. In other words have
>the governments pay the fucking HMO to exploit their poor for them.
snip
>Maybe Patrick Bond can write a few words on how SA is doing. What I
>think is going on from the nasty US corporate view is these bastards
>are trying to figure out methods to expand their very profitable
>model. I think they are using the AIDS drug distribution regime as a
>testing ground to get their foot in the door on how to `develop' the
>rest of the healthcare delivery system. From their point of view, most
>of the world is nothing but a giant disease opportunity to exploit for
>fun and profit.
The resistance to AIDS drug prices did accomplish lower prices and even the development of generics I believe so not everything the corps try succeeds.
>
>Anyway these are examples or models of what I think is behind the WB
>interest in `disability' issues. I automatically give the WB zero
>credibility for any `humanitarian' interest.
oh come now, inscribed on the wall of the World Bank is "Our dream is a world without poverty". In the last decade of the 20th century the number of people living in poverty increased by a hundred million. If the WB ever succeeded in its mission everyone would lose their jobs.
>
>I mean literally two tiers. One person can almost die from setting in
>their own feces surrounded by junk food packages with the tv blaring,
>stoned on meds, while another is busy delivering lectures in sociology
>and living the hip academic life---and they can live right down the
>block from each other.
This is our "Third World" in the USA but you won't see it on TV or hear it on the radio.
This is one reason I focus more on policy that affects poor disabled persons such as Medicaid and Medicare than civil rights. Civil rights is not lifting many people out of poverty and the support systems that allow unemployed disabled persons to survive are under attack. Bush has vowed to cut back Medicaid and I think he stands a good chance of destroying it, not to mention that privatizing Social Security will jeopardize SSI and SSDI by reducing the pool of SS money available now.
>Marta
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