I've never understood the appeal of this line of rhetoric. What's the message, DON'T fight for a national health system because you won't get one under capitalism? (Ignore all the capitalist countries that do, in fact, have them and have been, by report, losing them for 30, 40, 60 years. The British National Health Service saved my life at age 1 and now I'm 42 and they still have the NHS. But it's failing! It's almost gone! They've been saying that since I could first read.) Is this a way to convince people that they need socialism?
What seems to be true is that it won't be secure, you'll constantly have to fight for it. But hell, post-capitalist societies face constant attack too. Turns out freedom is a constant struggle. Meanwhile, I'd like a little less capitalism fucking up my life, for example, by eliminating private health insurance companies and their manufactured scarcity (you're right about that). If it takes a revolution, and it might, so be it. But it might just require a good scare.
>So when she needed a hip replacement operation, she was able to get it
>done immediately in a private hospital all expenses paid. Otherwise
>she would have had to spend months on a public hospital waiting list,
>in constant pain and unable to move about. Thousands of people have
>suffered like that in John Howard's Australia.
I don't even want to start on what my mom's hip replacement cost and how long she waited. And that's with 'good insurance.'
Jenny Brown
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