Rural Healthcare: United States vs. Vietnam

United States ☒
Vietnam ☑

By Gregory William

There is a crisis of rural health care in the U.S. Since 2005, over one hundred rural hospitals have closed across the country. Many more are on the verge. A study by the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program found that of the 89 hospitals that have closed since 2010, the vast majority (67) were in the South.

The authors of the Rural Health Research study note that the increase in closures coincides with the 2008-2009 recession, meaning that it is tied to the cyclical crises inherent in the capitalist system. Closures also accelerated in states that did not accept Medicaid expansion. In these mostly southern states, people also tend to be poorer, are more likely to be uninsured, and therefore cannot pay for care. Since our medical system is based around corporate greed and not people’s needs, the closure of hospitals and other healthcare facilities is unsurprising. In fact, the majority of hospitals that have closed are privately-owned, that is, for-profit hospitals.

It’s been drilled into our heads that the market always knows best, that if everything is privatized and for profit, things will run more efficiently. However, we see that the profit motive leads to extreme inefficiency and worse, hardship for the masses of people. How is this reasonable?

Communities across the U.S. lack hospitals and even basic clinics, and people cannot afford care. And yet, there is a parasitic class of “healthcare billionaires,” like Thomas Frist Jr., co-founder of the Hospital Corporation of America. His net worth is $11.6 billion, making him the wealthiest person in Tennessee. This is ironic considering that Tennessee had the highest number of hospital closures after Texas!

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. The U.S. has a GDP of about $20 trillion, almost 90 times the size of Vietnam’s GDP ($223.9 billion). Despite having a much smaller economy, Vietnam assures that every ward in the country (including in rural areas) has a clinic. When there isn’t a resident doctor in a village, the Ministry of Health assigns doctors to rotations. Vietnam is also on track to ensuring health coverage to all citizens.

This isn’t an accident. The fact is that Vietnam still has socialist, rational economic planning. Because they had a socialist revolution, the masses of working people have a real say over the direction of the country’s development (even if the government has allowed some capitalism to return).

The state still owns the oil and gas industry, and mostly controls banking, insurance, mobile service, construction, electricity production, ship-building, and many other industries. Land cannot be bought or sold because it belongs to the entire people. Because there is socialist, collective ownership in the economy (without profit being the only consideration), the government can make rational decisions about what to do with social resources. They can say,

“People in this area need a hospital, so we will build a hospital. This clinic doesn’t have a doctor, so we’ll assign one to work there.”

Again, all this is possible because working class and oppressed people fought for these things and won. Collectively, we too have to make the decision that our health—our lives—will not be a commodity. We have to organize to take power and overthrow the capitalist class so that we can pursue socio-economic development that meets the needs of the people and doesn’t destroy the planet.

John McCain Was No Hero

HE WAS A WAR CRIMINAL and DEFENDER of WALL STREET

Vietnamese Children fleeing U.S. bombing with napalm. 8 bombs a minute were dropped. Did John McCain drop this bomb?

Just because you’re not the best friend of the other criminal, Donald Trump, doesn’t make you a hero.

Senator John McCain was a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War— a war that took the lives of 3 million Vietnamese and 57,000 U.S. GI’s. The U.S. dropped 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It destroyed village after village. Many of the bombs dropped Agent Orange and napalm, chemical warfare that destroyed crops, forests, fields, rice paddies and tortured any human being hit by it. Decades after the bombing, Vietnamese and U.S. soldiers developed cancer and other illnesses from agent orange which took the Pentagon and U.S. government decades to admit.

McCain vigorously supported Bush’s war against Iraq and more recently backed the Saudi fascist government in their genocidal war on Yemen which both bombs and starves the people. Joining all presidents, Republican and Democrat, who do not view the lives of other people as important, McCain embraced every war waged by the US imperialist state. During his 2008 campaign for President, McCain sang the song “Bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.

Domestic Policy
The Children’s Defense Fund called McCain the worst Senator in Congress for children. Running against Obama in 2008, McCain promised to balance the budget by cutting social security, Medicare and Medicaid. He also supported spending billions on the profit-making domestic surveillance and homeland security. McCain was firmly against taxing big business. During 5 terms as Senator his record on labor rights, women, LGBTQ, racial equality, women’s rights and consumer rights was terrible.

And we cannot forget he chose Sarah Palin, a maniac far right racist as his vice-presidential running mate. Not that he ever made much of an attempt to conceal his own racism: this is a man who in 1983 voted against the establishment of MLK Day. The same man who in 2000 said, “I hate the g**ks… I will hate them as long as I live.”

McCain swayed in the political wind. At one point he supported a path for citizenship for immigrants. Then when running for President he endorsed the plan of the Arizona Cattlemen’s Association (giant ranchers on stolen land) to deploy armored tanks to the border and deprive immigrants of water in the desert. He accused immigrants of intentionally causing car crashes to collect money from insurance companies.

It’s understandable that the big business media would follow the script of this “great man” nonsense. But there is no excuse when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic Socialist of America member and Democratic Party Primary winner for Congress from New York, chimes in: “John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service.”

Clearly, the multi-millionaire McCain, whose father and grand-father were navy Admirals, lived a life of pandering to the rich, bombing other countries, and trying to destroy social programs. No great man, no hero, not even close.