AS
REGULAR READERS KNOW, I was badly injured in a household accident on 7
January 2018. Since then, the effort to get adequate care for the
injuries inflicted by that accident has thrust me into an eye-opening
struggle with Kaiser-Permanente, which took over Washington state's
Group Health Cooperative last year.
This fight is significant to Dispatches because it exemplifies the deadly obstacles that confront us all in a realm wherein healthcare is permanently defined as a privilege of wealth rather than a human right.
Significantly,
though I joined GHC as a voting member nearly 45 years ago, I never
once found it necessary to challenge its policies or personnel to obtain
needed care. Indeed – in perfect health at the time I joined – my
membership was more than anything a political statement, endorsement of
the co-op as the closest approximation to socialized medicine USian
Capitalism will ever allow. For that reason – never mind the pathetic
self-deception that proclaims healthcare-as-a-human-right to be achievable without full-fledged revolution – I voted against the KP takeover and will lament the death of GHC and its former, implicitly socialist idealism for as long as I remain alive.
Though
KP is allegedly a non-profit organization, its unwritten but
nevertheless obvious policy – that health care is indeed a privilege of
wealth rather than a human right – is no different from the policy of
the Empire itself and the policies of the Empire's more brazenly
murderous for-profit medical monopolies.
Indeed KP has often been accused of concealing for-profit operations behind a non-profit disguise. Quoth Wikipedia:
“Kaiser
has had disputes with its employees' unions, repeatedly faced civil and
criminal charges for falsification of records and patient dumping,
faced action by regulators over the quality of care it provided,
especially to patients with mental health issues, and has faced
criticism from activists and action from regulators over the size of its
cash reserves.”
