There’s a crazy war raging in the USA at the moment. On one side is President Obama, most of the Democratic party and millions of ordinary Americans who desperately need health care cover. On the other side are the medical insurance and drug companies who are making massive profits out of the health business; the Republican party, who see this issue as an opportunity to neutralize Obama; and millions of ordinary Americans who have been swayed by a massive wave of fear and distortion.

TV ads and email campaigns have been propagating false claims – such as the health reforms threatening the lives of old people and paying for abortions. Meetings have been disrupted and speakers shouted down by fear-mongers with “an orchestrated litany of lies.” These campaigns are of course funded by the companies with vested interests, companies who have turned the American health system into an unaffordable mess, companies who employ teams of doctors to invalidate as many insurance claims as possible so that even the people paying dearly for health care find it denied to them when they need it most.

You’d think a country as rich as the USA would have one of the best health systems in the world but I’ve seen it ranked anywhere between 16th and 34th in the world. To gain some idea of just how bad things are, watch Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko”. You may find Moore abrasive and extreme in his views but much of the material in the film is undeniable.

In the USA today the wealthy can buy the most sophisticated medical treatment in the world. Those on middle incomes struggle to afford health care and the poor are left unprotected. Over 46 million Americans don’t have health insurance and that figure is growing rapidly. As “Sicko” demonstrates, a poor, small country like Cuba offers its citizens better, cheaper medical care than the USA.

Improvement to the heath care system is obviously vital but the opponents of reform have managed to convince far too many credulous folk that health care reform threatens the American way of life with the SPECTRE OF SOCIALISM. It seems that fear of communism is still alive and well in the USA. When Russia threatened Georgia last year, for example, gun sales in the Southern USA rocketed… because those damn Russkies were attacking. The fact that it was the Eastern European country of Georgia not the state in the USA seemed to escape notice in the general paranoia.

Most Americans, in fact most people, don’t have a clear idea of what socialism actually is. That’s not surprising. It’s a messy collection of concepts and theories to do with the processes of production and distribution being owned and controlled by the state or collectively by the people. Karl Marx described socialism as the first step to communism and certainly the two are closely related but many countries incorporate some degree of socialism without being communist.

Our Welfare State system, here in Aotearoa/New Zealand is socialist in nature. We all contribute via our taxes to central government which provides us with state owned hospitals, schools, prisons, roads, houses etc. Most of our social welfare legislation was introduced in the 1930s but some goes back even earlier. Pensions for the elderly were introduced in 1898 and for widows a decade later. So in our country we have enjoyed the benefits of limited socialism for just over a century and we haven’t become a communist nation.

Left wing and right wing governments have tinkered with our social welfare system, expanding, trimming and occasionally attacking it – as when Ruth Richardson was minister of finance in the early 1990s and took to the system – creating the phrase “Ruthanasia.”

Of course our system isn’t perfect. Any welfare system will have faults and will be exploited by some. The tendency for welfare to create dependency and become a disincentive to work must be constantly addressed. But when you visit countries that have no welfare safety net, you realize what a great asset our system is.

Sure some people fall through the cracks in our social welfare system but by and large we don’t have people barely surviving in cardboard boxes, beggars starving to death on our streets or the seriously ill being turned away from our grossly over crowded hospitals.

You may have experienced some frustrations with our health service and certainly it has flaws but overall we are extremely fortunate. One of my oldest friends was recently admitted to Auckland Hospital with a brain tumor. He waited less than a week for the operation which was performed by Australasia’s best neurosurgeon. He received intensive, expert post surgical care and now is recuperating successfully at home. The whole skilled professional procedure didn’t cost him a cent. In the USA this treatment would have been far beyond his financial reach.

I wish I could shout out to our American brothers and sisters… “don’t believe the lies, don’t be browbeaten by the propaganda. Socialism isn’t a grim spectre that threatens your way of life. You can have a much better, fairer health system without becoming commies. Look at Canada, France, Australia and even little old Aotearoa. We all have better health systems and have remained free, democratic capitalists in spite of a little slice of socialism.

To my sisters and brothers in Aotearoa I would say let’s be grateful for what we’ve got and resist any attempts to degrade or privatize our welfare system. And let’s be on our guard against unscrupulous people who would use fear and misinformation to further their own ends and drive us, like a mob of sheep, to be fleeced.

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