By Steve Halpern
Ernesto Che Guevara:
“To be a revolutionary doctor, there must first be a revolution,”
“Let’s be realistic. Let’s do the impossible.”
As we continue to witness the unfolding crisis that is being exacerbated by the capitalist system, something interesting is happening. Over the years, I’ve noticed that when there are periodic crises of capitalism, the news media exposes some of the routine horrendous practices of the system.
We can start this story with the history of the owners of Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia.
The Owners of Hahnemann Hospital
Allegheny
Years ago, the owner of Hahnemann was the so-called non-profit, Allegheny Health & Education Research Foundation. That organization became the largest bankruptcy of a non-profit health care service in the country as of 1998.
The Board of trustees at Allegheny and the board of directors at Mellon Bank were the same people. At that time, Allegheny was in debt to Mellon to the tune of about $100 million. Because of this relationship, Mellon was the first to be paid when Allegheny went bankrupt. This meant that workers, vendors, as well as federally funded research programs lost significant amounts of money.
As we might imagine, the government went along with this legalized thievery.
Tenet Healthcare
Allegheny sold Hahnemann to the for-profit corporation, Tenet Healthcare. Tenet owned hospitals in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit the city in 2005. Memorial was one of those hospitals.
For three days, meteorologists predicted that Hurricane Katrina would strike New Orleans. Tenet responded to this information by refusing to evacuate patients from Memorial Hospital. Apparently, Tenet wanted income from all the beds in their hospitals every day.
As a result, flood waters surrounded Memorial, and the hospital was cut off from water and electricity. This meant that there was no way to flush toilets or provide electricity in 110 degree heat. After several days, the patients were evacuated, but there were 45 fatalities.
The District Attorney in New Orleans charged a doctor and two nurses with euthanizing patients. The doctor was interviewed on the news program 60 Minutes about those charges. A jury decided to drop the charges against the doctor and two nurses.
Tenet Healthcare set up a trust fund of $25 million to settle with all non-employees who were affected by this disaster.
Joel Freedman
Joel Freedman used to own Hahnemann before he declared the hospital bankrupt. That move caused the layoffs of 2,500 health care workers and the shuttering of the hospital. Freeman then had ideas of selling the centrally located hospital to a real estate developer. He felt that if he could pull off that kind of deal, he could make a financial killing.
Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic, city officials want to use the former Hahnemann building to treat the overflow of patients. Freedman says that this can happen only if he gets a $910,000 monthly rental fee.
I don’t think Freedman has commented on how that rental fee is more important than using the money to treat patients.
Bill Ackman of Pershing Square investments
Recently Bill Ackman, and his Pershing Square investment company, began to understand that the COVID-19 pandemic would have a devastating effect on the economy. So, he invested $27 million in a fund that shorted the market. That fund paid $2.6 billion.
A similar story was portrayed in the film The Big Short about how a few investors shorted the housing market in 2008 and made financial killings. Jeffrey Bezos the CEO of Amazon also profited to the tune of billions by selling off Amazon stock before the market crash.
Ackman is using this money to buy back stocks that lost money. I don’t believe that he has commented on how that money might be better used by purchasing surgical masks, respirators, and hospital beds.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
Today, the Treasury Secretary is Steven Mnuchin. In 2009 Mnuchin took over the bank OneWest. We might consider that, at that time, the government spent literally trillions of dollars purchasing worthless mortgages. They called this massive funding quantitative easing.
Many workers visit casinos where we oftentimes loose money. However, I’ve never met a worker who expected the government to award compensation for loosing money at a casino. However, those rules don’t apply to capitalists.
When the capitalists lost massive amounts of money in 2008, the government adopted legislation to give them back that money, to the tune of trillions of dollars in quantitative easing.
However, Steven Mnuchin wasn’t satisfied with that award. He organized to evict 36,000 homeowners because they failed to make their mortgage payments to his OneWest bank.
One of those evictions went to court. Judge Jude Jeffrey labelled Mnuchin’s evictions as, “Mortifying abuse.”
Why were those evictions “mortifying abuse“? OneWest evicted 90 year-old Ossie Lofton from her home for non-payment of 27 cents. No, there is nothing wrong with your eyesight. The bank run by the Treasury Secretary evicted a 90 year-old woman for non-payment of 27 cents. This story was reported by Bess Levin in a December 1, 2016 Vanity Fair article.
I don’t think Mnuchin has commented on how that 27 cents was so important that he needed to evict Ossie Lofton from her home.
Recently the stimulus legislation passed by the government enables Mnuchin to wire trillions of dollars to banks because they have lost vast amounts of money. Working people are speculating as to whether or not we will receive any money.
President Donald Trump
The following are a list of quotations from the President of the United States of America about COVID 19:
January 22—“We have it totally under control.”
February 2—“We pretty much shut it down coming from China. It’s going to be fine.”
February 24—“The coronavirus is very much under control in the U.S.A. . .Stock Market starting to look very good to me.”
March 10—“It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
March 13—President Trump instituted a National Emergency Declaration.
While epidemiologists have predicted that this pandemic will last eighteen months to two years, President Trump made a statement that he wants people back to work by Easter.
I happen to have received a letter from President Trump that was part of a mass mailing. When we look at the above quotations by the President, Trump has the audacity to argue that “the Liberal mainstream media—who is spreading their fake news 24 hours a day—they are doing everything they can do to defeat me.” The above quotations indicate that if the President is interested in the source of “fake news” all he needs to do is look in the mirror.
When we think about these statements, we might conclude that the President doesn’t have much going on between his ears. However, when we look at all the capitalists listed in this blog, they all have something in common. This is the idea that profits are more important than human life.
So what is the alternative?
Daniel Hoan, Milwaukee Mayor from 1916-1940
Daniel Hoan was the Mayor of Milwaukee during the pandemic of 1918 that cause the deaths of about 675,000 people in the United States. Hoan was a member of the Socialist Party. In that same year, the socialist Eugene Debs gave a speech in opposing the United States participation in World War I. Debs served three years in prison for giving that speech.
John M. Barry is the author of the 2004 book: The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. In this book, Barry reported that the so-called Spanish Flu actually originated in Kansas. The 1918 influenza was named “Spanish Flu” because the Spanish press were the first to report on the pandemic.
Barry also reported that the pandemic was spread to Europe by soldiers because the United States government transported them from Kansas. A new and more deadly strand of the virus returned to the states with soldiers who returned from the war. In the world about 50 million people died from the 1918 pandemic. That is about five times more deaths than all the soldiers killed in the First World War.
Although Debs and Hoan both were members of the Socialist Party, Hoan supported the Government decision to send U.S. troops to fight in the war. However, because of his socialist background, Hoan had a different approach to dealing with the 1918 pandemic.
He made the Health Commissioner George C. Ruhland the person in charge of dealing with the pandemic. Ruhland issued printed material that explained the measures needed to be taken in the city. Those handbills were printed in English, Russian, Lithuanian, Yiddish, and Italian.
Saloons were open, but patrons were only allowed to have a drink and then leave.
All those who had been infected were isolated.
Factories staggered work schedules to prevent overcrowding on the streetcars.
Because of these and other measures, Milwaukee had fewer fatalities than other cities.
In his letter to me, President Trump argues that “Socialist Democrats” are running against him. Had the President initiated similar measures as Milwaukee in 1918, perhaps fewer people would have died.
The gold standard in fighting against the pandemic – Cuba
In the year 1959 a new revolutionary government came to power in Cuba. One of the first measures of this government was to go on a literacy drive to teach everyone on the island how to read. Young and old Cubans went to all corners of the island and taught some of the least affluent people how to read.
The new Revolutionary government also made health care a right for all citizens. In the past, Cubans who lived in remote locations might need to walk for two days in order to receive medical care. For the first time, many Cubans who never had access to health care, began to see that they would be cared for when they became ill or injured.
Another initiative of the Cuban revolutionary government was that in 1962 Cuban health care workers traveled to Algeria to give assistance to the medical community in that country.
When the HIV/AIDS pandemic spread throughout the world, Cuba took extraordinary measures to isolate those who had the disease. Those patients received significantly more resources than other Cubans.
Because of those measures, Cuba was able to limit the number of people who contacted HIV/AIDS on the island. The World Fact Book is published by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. According to this World Fact Book, Cuba has about one sixth the number of HIV/AIDS patients per capita, as the United States. The news program 60 Minutes reported on this story.
Starting in the 1980s Cuba began doing research on an interferon drug. This drug stimulates the immunological system to fight disease. The new Cuban drug was developed to treat hundreds of thousands of Cuban patients who were suffering from the disease dengue. Because of the Cuban interferon injections, the lives of many Cubans were saved.
Today, the Cuban interferon drug Alpha 2B has been shown to be effective in preventing COVID-19 patients from getting the potentially fatal disease of pneumonia. This drug is being mass produced in China by a Cuban-Chinese team. Newsweek Magazine reported on this story.
In the year 2014, the deadly virus of Ebola was spreading through three nations in West Africa. Those nations asked the Cuban President Raul Castro to send health care workers.
About 12,000 Cubans volunteered to be a part of the team that would treat highly infectious Ebola patients. 256 highly qualified health care workers were part of the team that succeeded in beginning to eradicate Ebola in West Africa.
Enrique Ubieta Gómez is a Cuban journalist who wrote the book Red Zone – Cuba and the Battle Against Ebola in West Africa. This book was published by Pathfinder Press in 2019. Gómez’ book documents the immense challenges the Cubans faced, and how they persistently worked to effectively care for Ebola patients.
Since the year 1962, Cuban health care workers have treated some of the poorest patients in 109 nations throughout the world. We might consider that one of the primary causes of death in the world is poverty. When people don’t have consistent access to food, water, electricity, transportation, housing, and education, they are at risk of a short life expectancy. Providing health care to some of the poorest people in the world has been a priority for the Cuban government.
Today Cuba continues its tradition of sending its doctors and health care workers all over the world to treat patients with COVID-19.
So, what conclusion can we draw from all this information? As humanity faces the COVID-19 pandemic we have a choice. In this blog, I’ve shown how capitalists have made a priority of profits over human lives. We can also question why hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on the military allegedly to defend us. How can those expenditures be justified, when today there are shortages of surgical masks, respirators, and hospital beds.
The Polish born socialist Rosa Luxemburg once argued that humanity has a choice of “socialism or barbarism.” That choice is becoming more and more clear every day.
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