What price saving life and health?

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Well, Mr Thompson THE issue of private versus public medicine is the issue of capitalism versus socialism in a nutshell.

The Tory argument for private medicine is the same as its argument for the private profit system across the board. Everyone gees a fair deal for a fair' price. and a fair income for a fair effort. So in the end everyone gees as mach as tbey think is morth maling the effort for, with the minimum of waste and inefficiency.

But capitalism does not work like this pretty picture of an ideal free market. Some get a huge income for no useful work at all, others have no income because they don't get the chance to do a fair day's you can either die, a work' It's difficult to see what is 'fair' about the sort of horrors that private medicine produces in the USA. Take one example:

John Lacey, aged 28, could not afford to pay his company's private medical insurance which costs 45 dollars a month. While cleaning his motor cycle with petrol, he accidentally set light to himself and received burns over 95 per cent of his body. He received emergency treatment from the nearby medical centre. But he required treatment at a Specialist Burns Unit to survive. Because he was not covered by a private Heakh Insurance, 40 hospitals refused him treatlave private treatmen ment. As one official at Savancoh Hospital, We'r gia, commented, not condemning other hospitals for refusing to take him. A burn victim is expensive to treat.' (One man burned in a restaurant has run up a bill of 80,000 dollars in six months.) Eventually a Congressman agreed to underwrite at least 50,000 dollars cost of the treatment and luckily John was treated. (Guardian, 13.5.82)

What's a 'fair' price for saving life and health? Even if it were 'efficient' to organise the basic care that people provide for each other through the cash nexus, do we want a society like that?

Socialists aim society on the principle - from each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her need. Health care should be provided as a basic service for all - and so should housing, education, clothing, food...

Over the decades the labour movement has fought for and won some partial provision of some basic services. And even Thatcher's Tories are likely to flinch at the idea of turning the clock right back and scrapping the NHS altogether.

The Tories can, however, shift the balance between private and public medicine. And they have already begun to do that in a sizeable way.

Something over four million people in Britain had private medical insurance at the end of 1981 - where there were only 120,000 in 1950. The Tory government has encouraged this growth by granting tax reliet for medical insurance premiums.

As private medicine booms, and the NHS is cut back further and further, we move towards situation where the NHS provides only a minimal iailback service, ano or any major, complicated treatment you either have to sit out a long waiting list or pay to jump the queue.

If private medicine is capitalism in a nutshell, is the Natiónal 1 dealth Service Vo: for although it is a reform won by the labour movement against capitalism, exists in a capitalist society and is coloured, structured, and warped by that.

To become socialist it needs to be changed. The health service needs to be freed from all charges and from the leaching of the drug companies and suppliers, by the nationalisation of these profiteers.

It needs to be put under the democratic control of THE Claimants' Union and the Action Group on Unemployment in Islington, North London, have been picketing and leafletting the local DHSS offices at Archway Tower in protest at the visit of the Special Claims Control Team.

CPSA members at Archway Tower are refusing all cooperation with the team, in line with national union policy.

The Special Claims Control Team was not directly involved in the Oxford "swoop', but it was in Oxford a few weeks before that_and probably had some indirect part in it.

What the team does is go round from area to area, select a sample from certain categories of claimant, and subject them to intense investigation. Sometimes health workers and the local communities, and adequately funded. Its workers need decent wages.

And the sexist, elitist hierarchy of the health service, the mystifications of medical 'professionalism' , need to be broken down.

That would be a socialist health service. The fight for it is inseparable from the fight for a socialist society. they launch prosecutions, more often they try to pressure people to drop their claims. The unions have thick dossiers on intimidation of claimants.

It all contrasts sharply with the state's lackadaisical attitude to under-claiming of benefit (through fear and lack of confidence in the face of bureaucracy), or to tax evasion - both of which involve far greater sums than any social security overclaiming.

The team is due to be at Archway Tower for two months. CPSA branch secretary and local Labour councillor Bill Sillet told SO: "We intend to continue campaigning against them and make their stay unpleasant for them. We want to get rid of them as quickly as possible". of private insurance everyone were im! mented.

In any case the Cl suggests immediate in duction of charges to vis doctor and a further ris the cost of prescriptions The CPRS proposals endorsed by Tory treas ministers and have backing of Thatcher I self - though they recc ise certain problems pushing them thro under conditions wr they would antago substantial sections of Tory middle class as wel the whole of the worl class, and could split Tory party itself.

It is useful however know the real thought the minds of the Tories and the stark danger the most basic of pu services and living st ards if the workers' mi ment is not mobilised force them from office. IN BURY, Lancashire, CPSA and SCPS membe the social security ber office are on strike agai management investig team.

The team is visiting as the first of 26 ol across the country -they chose Bury first cause of its record two! ago of cooperating wi similar survey despite ional union policy!

But SCPS sub-branct retary Peter Law says: realise that we were w to cooperate with the report. When it was pul ed it didn't reflect our 1 at all". (The survey dir affects SCPS members, CPSA members are or solidarity).

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