NEW YORK CITY,  February 14—Despite bitterly cold weather, 200 retired city workers demonstrated today against the racist, profit-driven privatization of their health insurance. This fight against this latest attack by the bosses on our health reflects our anger at this first opening shot in the reduction of health coverage. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) points out that the entire healthcare system is driven by the profit motive. From medical practices to hospitals to labs to the pharmaceutical industry, capitalism determines who has access to good health.
If we’re serious about optimizing our collective health, we need to be fighting to build the mass international PLP and the struggle for communist revolution.
Only in a communist system, run for and by the working class, can there be a healthy life with less stress and alienation. There will be opportunities for exercise and a healthy diet. Quality healthcare will be provided equally to all based solely on need.
Racist unequal society= Racist unequal healthcare
Speaker after speaker blasted the change from traditional government-run Medicare to a for-profit Medicare (dis)Advantage plan run by insurance companies. Most expressed support for universal single-payer Medicare, a government plan without insurance company middlemen sucking out profits.
So far, between 45,000 to 50,000 retirees have opted out of this new plan. They have chosen, under duress, to pay about $2,300 per person per year to keep the plan they have today. Those who have made this choice are mainly higher-income white workers. Lower income, disproportionately Black and Latin, retirees will be forced into the new plan if and when it goes into effect.
Racism also means that segregated living patterns continue to mean harder access to quality health facilities generally not found in predominantly Black and Latin working class neighborhoods. The coronavirus pandemic in less than two years slashed three years of life expectancy from Black and Latin workers in the U.S. (NYT, 7/21/21).
But ultimately, racism and racist inequalities drag down standards across the board to ensure that most workers receive inadequate health care, as evidenced by decreasing life expectancies for white workers as well. We need to recognize racism as capitalism’s chief attack against the working class, and fight for multiracial unity and the Party as our strongest weapons to fight back.
Don’t rely on politicians, courts or capitalism
Asking newly elected Mayor, the Black ex-police captain Eric Adams, to have a heart on Valentine’s Day is an example of wishful and misguided thinking on the part of the liberal organizers of the rally. Big Fascist Adams has already shown whose side he is on (see editorial, page 2). One of his first actions was to cut all city services except for the police and corrections. The corporate-sponsored Citizens Budget Commission called these plans “important, welcome, and refreshing initial steps in the right direction”(NYT, 2/16).
The court case initiated by rank-and-file retirees has delayed the privatization plan, but is unlikely to succeed in stopping it from taking effect at some time. The court is unlikely to buck the trend toward Medicare privatization. Throughout the U.S., retiree health benefits are being moved from publicly run Medicare to privately run Medicare (dis)Advantage plans steering profits to insurance companies tied to financial capitalists. Over 41 percent of all Medicare enrollees are now in such (dis)Advantage plans (Chatis group, 2/21). That is an astonishing 28.5 million people and growing (Axios, 1/22).
Retired New York City workers have shown over the last year that they won’t watch this racist attack go down without fighting back. As we say, we are retired but we haven’t expired. Learning lessons in this struggle, we can help build the movement for communist revolution!