Reply #2: "the sad shape of Venezuela's health care"--It is not easy to provide health care to [View All]

millions of people whom previous rightwing "the rich get richer" administrations have utterly neglected in every way--including access to basic health care (let alone high end health care), education, even basic literacy, clean water, sewage facilities and other infrastructure, decent housing, jobs and hope (a vital component of health). Then there is the education of doctors and health professionals--utterly neglected. The creation of local community health centers--zero, zip, zilch. The provision of a basic, bottom-line diet against starvation for the poorest of the poor--the rich elite couldn't have cared less about them.

Just imagine a succession of Bush Juntas over many decades. The Bush Junta pretty much destroyed this country in two terms. Imagine what it would be like if we had never had an FDR or "New Deal"--for the Bushwhacks to attempt to dismantle--and instead had had a succession of Bush Juntas over the last century. No social security. No medicare. No clean water/sewage control for much of the population. Public works serving only the rich. All the riches of the country going into a few pockets, and everybody else desperate--one paycheck away from homelessness, or on the streets already, trying to eke out an existence as a street vendor. Imagine a Great Depression lasting for decades while the rich lived well off the country's main resource, oil, and gave the rest away to multinational corporations.

This is the situation that the Chavez government faced when they were voted in, in 1998--complete malfeasance, on every front, going back many decades. A health care system had to be built from nothing in most places. An agricultural system, for food security, had to be built from nothing. An educational system--and basic literacy programs--had to be built from practically nothing. Local manufacturing, job creation, small business support, pavement, streetlights and flood control in many places, and on and on.

WE had an infrastructure TO be dismantled by the Bushwhacks--our school system, libraries, parks, highways, hospitals, clinics, manufacturing base, pensions for the elderly, socialized medicine for the elderly, basic welfare, professional policing, emergency services, tax system and much more--created by the "New Deal" and subsequent "New Deal"-like projects--were all THERE, to be looted and destroyed by the super-rich. Not so in Venezuela. They lived off the oil and cared for nothing but their Jaguars and their Gucci bags. So, forebear on the snotty remarks--"the sad shape of Venezuela's health care"--and if you are a U.S. citizen, answer me this: Is it better to TRY to provide health care to ALL--however imperfect the system may be, and whatever birth pangs the system may go through--or provide NOTHING--NO health care for the great majority of people, while the rich have tummy tucks, second livers and hearts, and the whitest teeth money can buy?

What is YOUR prescription for Venezuela's health care system, by the way? And what is the source of your information that it is in "sad shape"? Were the poor who now have basic health clinics in their neighborhood, that they can walk to, consulted about what THEY think of the health care system? Or only doctors with dreams of fabulous riches in Miami?

The English, Canadian, French, Scandinavian and other free, universal health care systems have been utterly reviled, slandered, lied about and made fun of, by agents of US health profiteers since I was young (1960s). Not one positive word have I ever heard, in my entire life, from our corpo-fascist 'news' monopolies, about these very successful, universal health care programs. Why should I believe similar criticism now, of an effort by a 'third world' country to provide universal free health care?

Maybe your criticism of it is valid, maybe it isn't. There has so much utter bullshit about Venezuela in our corpo-fascist press, that I would need to know and evaluate the sources. But if it is true--that parts of it, or all of it--is in "sad shape"--what do you recommend? And if you are a Venezuelan, why aren't you recommending it there? Why are you criticizing it here, in a mostly U.S. forum? How would YOU provide universal, free medical care to millions of poor people who have never had it before? What is YOUR plan?