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Time of
Plague and Meltdown: Mass Murder by Corporate
Duopoly
By Glen Ford
March 28,
2020 "Information
Clearing House"
- The
shrinking of the public health sector is a
capitalist crime, abetted by the two corporate
parties.
“There is now
no possibility of avoiding many tens of thousands of
deaths due to a shortage of equipment, beds and
health care personnel.”
Tens
of thousands of people, disproportionately Black and
brown, are marked for death by coronavirus in the
coming weeks and months because the United States
political system allows only corporate parties to
govern. By ensuring that the Dictatorship of Capital
is immune to effective electoral challenge, the
duopoly system has made the people of the United
States less healthy than the rest of the developed
world, and far more vulnerable to epidemics of all
types. As dutiful servants of Capital, the
Democratic and Republican parties have for more than
40 years facilitated a Race to the Bottom
(austerity) that has steadily lowered working
people’s living standards and slashed social service
supports, including the number of hospital beds,
which have declined by more than
half a million
since 1975 despite a population increase of 114
million.
Barack Obama and his Democrat-controlled Congress
saved the oligarchy from self-destruction in the
Great Recession, and then collaborated with the
resurgent Republicans in a “Grand
Bargain” to ensure
that social services, including local and state
public health systems, would never recover lost
revenue and personnel. The pruning and
hyper-privatization of medical care was overseen
mainly by Democrats in the big cities, and largely
by Republicans on the state level, with both parties
in general agreement that the public health sector
was less “efficient” and “innovative” than
for-profit medicine. The public health sphere became
even more dependent on private suppliers, including
overseas sources. Inventories of ventilators, masks
and other equipment and gear were kept to a minimum,
in line with the private sector’s “just-in-time
”
profit-maximizing philosophy. But time ran out when
the coronavirus hit, and there is now no possibility
of avoiding many tens of thousands of deaths due to
a shortage of equipment, beds and health care
personnel.
“The pruning
and hyper-privatization of medical care was overseen
mainly by Democrats in the big cities, and largely
by Republicans on the state level.”
The
shrinking of the public health sector is a
capitalist crime, abetted by the two corporate
parties.
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