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DETROIT — Business in this country has always supported healthcare for some of us when it benefits business profits. It never benefited all of us and business does not support any healthcare system that will.
In 1789 the Federal government established the Marine Hospital Service for sick and injured seamen. This healthcare service grew out of the need for the owners of merchant ships engaged in foreign trade (for instance, cotton produced by slaves to British textile mills and finished textile goods to the United States) to keep their hired crews healthy. It was funded by a payroll tax on those crews to fund the construction of a series of publicly owned hospitals in the major ports to provide healthcare for those crews, but more importantly to isolate and treat contagious diseases.
Its name was changed in 1902 to the “Public Health and Marine Hospital Service,” and again in 1912 to just the “Public Health Service,” and its primary mission became the isolation and treatment of contagious diseases.
The Civil War caused hundreds of thousands of casualties, a healthcare and a political crisis on the level of a contagious disease. This led to construction of the racially segregated National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (NHDVS) in 1865 for long-term care of those veterans. It was renamed the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in 1873. Between 1865 and 1930, 11 National Homes were built and eventually became the basis for the Veterans Administration (VA) in 1930. The implementation of the Medicare program in 1966 propelled the elimination of all official forms of racial segregation in hospitals. But, today there are 350,000 veterans waiting for healthcare from the VA.
After WWII, the federal government excluded from income and Social Security taxes the cost of medical insurance provided by private employers to their workers. The purpose was to provide employers with a healthy workforce to meet the profitable demand of rebuilding the productive capacities of Western Europe and Japan.
From the early 1980s and beyond, western Europe and Japan turned from a profitable market to global competitors. This was the beginning of the drive for productivity through labor replacing technology (robotics) rather than labor expansion and intensification, which marked the previous 40 years.
The need for a healthy labor force declined and the tactic had to change. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the tactic for transferring the responsibility for medical insurance from the employer to the employee in order to increase profits. It is about reorganizing healthcare for the corporations.
Healthcare for All is the strategy of the many
Healthcare for All is not a reform of Healthcare for Some. It is a strategy to establish a healthcare system to meet the healthcare needs of everyone in this country. Healthcare for Some is incompatible with that. The Republicans and Democrats will not fight for Healthcare for All because they are controlled by the corporations. It will take an independent political movement and the end of a system based on the profit of the few to achieve Healthcare for All.
