A New Direction Is Needed for the Economy!
Crisis in Health Care Sector Deepens
Rally
for public health
care at opening of Ontario legislature, September 25,
2023.
Reports from health care workers and their organizations reveal an escalating crisis of lack of funding and official support for the sector. For example in Ontario, Zaid Noorsumar, a spokesperson for CUPE, says the Ontario government must immediately commit $1.25 billion to avoid "a crisis of epic proportions."
Zaid comments: "The fact we (Ontario) had about 1,200 hospital service closures in 2023 -- including close to 800 ER shutdowns -- shows there is ongoing degradation of care with great suffering for people trying to access these services. One ER closure is one too many, and completely unacceptable; hence, we are calling for a $1.25 billion increase (over four years and on top of an amount to cover price inflation) to restore the quality of our public hospitals through the addition of staff and staffed beds. Government inaction will only exacerbate staffing shortages and lead to longer wait times, delayed treatments, higher risk of medical errors, and subsequently more suffering for patients and their families."
The conditions in the health care sector are in contradiction with the political authority that dictates funding and operational matters. The conflict points to fundamental matters of organization and relations for the working class to address in order to bring the political authority into conformity with the modern socialized conditions.
In the constant battles working people engage in for wages, improved working conditions and for increased funding for health care and other universal social programs, two issues stand out for consideration:
1) Health care workers and their organizations who know the conditions from direct experience do not have the political authority to direct and enforce change. In fact, the current political authority and institutions block health care workers and their organizations from participating in governing the sector and resolving its problems through action. This fundamental issue within the battle for wages and increased funding for social programs must be taken up for consideration. Without political authority the working class is not able to resolve in a definitive manner the economic, social and environmental problems that plague society.
2) The health care system and its relations within the imperialist economic system of privately-owned socialized means of production and distribution are not viewed objectively as a producer of social value. This distorted viewpoint regards the health care system as a consumer of social value requiring public tax funds to operate. This results in other businesses and institutions within the economy not having proper economic relations with the health care system, which require them to realize (buy) the social product the health care system produces just as they must buy material means of production to function.
The
social product the health care sector produces is an enriched
capacity
to work of a healthy working class, the human means of
production.
Businesses and institutions within the socialized economy must
directly
purchase their human means of production just as they must
purchase
material means
of production if they are to function. The purchase is enacted
with
workers as wages and certain benefits, and should be likewise
enacted
with health care institutions in direct payment to them for the
social
value they put in the capacity to work of healthy workers. The
working
class reproduces
this value as new value in the course of its production of social
product.
The working class must take stock of the situation, principally the contradiction between the conditions and authority. This requires organization, action and the necessary theory to resolve the contradiction and bring into being a new political authority with modern structures whereby working people are empowered to discuss the conditions they face, assess what needs to be done and act accordingly with authority.
A step in that direction is to demand an immediate increase in funding for social programs in general and health care in particular, as CUPE Ontario has done, without neglecting the necessity for objectivity of consideration of the underlying social class contradiction between the conditions and authority and the necessity to resolve it for society to move forward.
Health care workers and their organizations must empower themselves to discover the needs of the system in their area and the required funding to provide free health care for all without exception given the overall conditions of the economy and its productive forces, and demand proper funding and payment from enterprises in the economy. All businesses and institutions with over 50 workers on their payroll should pay directly to health care institutions a prorated amount that covers the price of production of the health care portion of their workers' capacity to work from birth to passing away.
The key for working people is to become active thinking political Canadians who unite with their fellow workers and allies to more deeply involve themselves in the economic and political affairs of the nation.
This article was published
in
Volume 54 Numbers 1-2 - January - February
2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/M5400110.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca