[lbo-talk] SEIU defends Kaiser-Permanente

[Jim Straub]

Of course all healthcare companies under capitalism will do bad
things.  That's the name of the game when you make health a commodity
instead of a right.  And I liked what sicko had to say about
healthcare alot more than any of the blather coming out of stern's
mouth.  On the other hand, seiu will get something passed on
healthcare, which will increase the number of people who have access
to it; it won't be very good, and won't be single payer, because the
politics are way too far right for us to win such a thing.  SEIU's
strategy is that things like single payer, or anythign else good
really, can only potentially be won with the country's politics
brought back from the far right, largely through a rebuilt labor
movement which represents 40% of the country's private sector
workforce instead of 7%.  Me personally, I wish seiu had some more
ballsy, visionary, gutsy leadership, which would still shout single
payer now from the rooftops even if we can't win it with this congress
or the next one, because its just the right thing to do.

But anyway, I wanted to ask Doug if he can cite me a single major
union contract with a health system that is better than, or even
nearly as good as, Kaiser's.

You can't.  They are the best.  By far.  It's a rare situation where a
big company has rolled over to its workers in a thoroughgoing,
systematic fashion.  It doens't make the company any less of an evil
capitalist entity selling healthcare, which shouldn't be a commodity,
in a capitalist system.  Amazingly back when auto had amazing
contracts with GM, GM still was in the business of manufacturing cars,
which are destroying the planet.

Kaiser is the place to work if you're a healthcare worker.  They are
by far the best.  If the rest of corporate america could be brought to
their knees the way kaiser has, then we'd have 30% density in the
labor movement, a politics more oriented to the center or left than
today's far right, and the republican right wouldn't be able to win an
election outside of the southeast.  We could legislate not just single
payer but also a new safety net, the rebuilding of our cities and the
gulf coast, and bring the troops home and keep them home.

If I had any real brains I'd be in trade school to become a rad tech
and go work in a kaiser hospital.

I really liked sicko.  Between to catch a fire, and the wind that
shakes the barley, there's been an awful lot of moving socialist
propaganda in our movie theatres lately.