Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Universal Health Care: Weapon of the Ruling Class (Part 1)

Universal Healthcare: Weapon of the Ruling Class

Many of my fellow leftists are excited by the rhetoric that emanated from the Obama administration about their commitment to providing universal health care. As much as this might sound like a victory for the left, we cannot be fooled. In truth, universal health care is not a solution to the gross inequity in medical care between the lower and ruling class, and the proposed reforms serve only to prop up a bloated, inefficient, and inherently inequitable health care system.

Truly equitable medical care cannot be provided with universal health care, for it continues to prop up the system of private insurance rather then asserting the fundamental truth that government must assume responsibility for providing health care for the people. We cannot be fooled by Washington’s reactionary stalling tactics. We must continue to fight harder then ever to win real substantive victories towards the establishment of socialized medicine in the United States.

The problem with universal health care, in the form currently being pushed in Washington, is that it does not institute substantive change in our medical system. Obama’s plan specifically focuses, he claims, on reducing the cost of private insurance so that more Americans can be insured. By reducing the cost of insurance Obama’s plan does not reform the fundamental problem with our system, and the plan merely makes the atrocities committed by the insurance industry more palatable to the working class by giving the equal access to the chaotic, bureaucratic, and ineffective system that the middle class has suffered under for decades.

By increasing the scope of access rather then improving the quality of care, universal health care defuses public furor over the system’s flaws by giving it a façade of equity. In truth, the system continues unchanged.