If we need any more reasons to nationalize health care so it can be guaranteed to all, the horror stories in America surrounding the cost and availability of prescription drugs provide many examples.
The cost of a drug for rheumatoid arthritis was recently boosted from $366 per month to $1,800. A new medication to treat Hepatitis C costs $113,400 for a 12-week treatment. According to Bloomberg, 15 cancer drugs introduced in the past five years cost more than $10,000 a month. Medications for asthma, high blood pressure and diabetes have been among those seeing the highest price increases in recent years.
Even people with insurance can’t afford the drugs they need, as insurance companies either refuse to cover expensive drugs or impose large copays on patients. A recent survey reported by CNN found that “one out of four people whose prescription drug costs went up said they were unable to pay their medical or medication bills. Seven percent said they missed a mortgage payment. One out of four stopped getting their prescriptions filled, and one out of five skipped scheduled doses.”
With average annual profit margins around 20 percent or more, pharmaceuticals is the most profitable industry in the world—more profitable than banking, auto manufacturing, or oil and gas. And the drug companies in the US are allowed to gouge consumers worse than in any other country.
The problem is obvious: it’s the private ownership of the drug industry and all the other aspects of health care. Health care is run for profit, not for people’s needs. In the case of drugs, this means not only that patients suffer dangerous side effects, but that only the most profitable drugs get development funding. And why can’t we have drug-free alternatives for treating illness? The solution is equally obvious: the people must take this industry over. Indeed, the only way to guarantee universal health care in our country is through the creation of a national health service, where every aspect of health care—hospitals, clinics, doctors and medicines—is a public service provided by the government.
A handful of wealthy people cannot be allowed to decide whether the rest of us will have health care. We have a right to have health care. To get it, the people are going to have to take over the corporations that have taken over our society, and run those corporations in the interest of society.
This is a question of life or death. Private ownership of the health care industry is condemning tens of thousands to death in our country every year and standing in the way of social progress. Is the government going to represent the interests of the capitalists and their corporations, or the interests of the people?
The people are ultimately fighting for a whole new society where private ownership for profit is not standing in the way of all of us leading healthy lives. Nationalizing health care would be a step forward along that road to a new world.
