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NEWS & LETTERS, October 2002
Workshop Talks
Targeting daily life
by Htun Lin Bush and Ashcroft want all of us American citizens to be in
a perpetual "state of alert," meaning a state of fear, and to be on
the lookout for "suspicious activities." On Sept. 10, on the eve of
the first anniversary of September 11, Ashcroft issued yet another
"terrorist alert." Obeying her Commander-in-Chief's orders, a Georgia
woman in a cafe called the Sheriff's department to inform on three
"Arab-looking men" when she overheard a fragment of their conversation
about "bringing it down." The three, all medical students, were pulled over by
Florida state troopers and detained and questioned for the next 17 hours. All of
this is now allowed under Bush's “Patriot Act”: on accusation alone, anyone
can disappear indefinitely without charge or due process. It has now come out
that they were U.S. citizens, talking about bringing down a car from Kansas. My family fled in the 1960s as political refugees from
Burma, ruled by military dictatorship, which detained people based on racial
profiling. Their version of "Homeland Security" was called "State
Law and Order Restoration Council," responsible not only for detaining
political candidates from opposing parties, but also the murder of thousands of
political dissidents, ethnic minorities and student activists who mysteriously
"disappeared." Those old enough to have lived through the McCarthy era
also can remember how many were detained for having "strange"
political discussions, or reading "suspicious" books. Today's
computers have greatly amplified the ability to monitor routine daily life. Now
Ashcroft and Bush's Homeland Security czar want a national identity card for
everybody. This intrusive attitude has also permeated our working lives. When I started my job at a hospital, we didn't have
computers. We did everything on typewriters. Our original mission as frontline
healthcare workers used to be to get the patient the medical treatment he needed
as soon as possible. We even sent handwritten reminders each year so patients
wouldn't forget their annual physical exams. Now that we do everything on
computers, we do not send out invitations for checkups anymore. Even when
patients show up in a crisis, we are told by the computers to be on
"alert,” while managers tell us to "cut costs." HMO COPS The computer profiles alert us to all sorts of things, from
how much co-payment the patient owes to whether the patient has
"drug-seeking behavior." They have turned us health workers into HMO
cops. We're on constant lookout for "suspicious activity" like
unemployed people who have no insurance trying to use our clinics by using
someone else's identity. We're told to demand a picture ID or drivers' license.
Trying to obtain desperately needed healthcare has been transformed into a
crime. A nation of over 40 million without health insurance
creates a large pool of potential criminals. They have nothing to say about the
ever-increasing threat of "John-Q" type crisis situations from
desperate patients at the end of their rope. Each year thousands of health
workers are injured on the job by angry and distraught patients. We health workers are between a rock and a hard place, as
the economic downturn is expected to throw more people into the ranks of the
uninsured. Resentment and desperation, as well as fear and suspicion, pervades
everyday life in a world under Bush's permanent war. WHEN HEALTH CARE IS OUTLAWED While managed care is busy erecting barriers, one group,
Doctors Without Borders, is engaged on the ground in the struggle to make health
care not a commodity but a universal right as it is stated at least on paper in
the UN Charter. I recently heard Dr. Paul Farmer from DWB speak about how
healthcare is denied in places like Haiti and Africa because it is not cost
effective for the pharmaceutical industry. This is the same problem writ large
that we are experiencing among the poor in this country. Many grassroots organizations have to behave as
"outlaws" when they try to provide medicines desperately needed by
poor people. While it is against the law to dispense medicine outside capital's
restrictions, it is not against the law to continue to produce and sell millions
of landmines around the world. Is it any wonder that in a world which has created so many laws to keep "law and order," we have neither. What we have is the law of the jungle, of "might makes right.” The order of the day is to "stay alert" and fearful in a world of chaos and perpetual disorder. We will never have the kind of real democracy which places a prime necessity human life's self-development unless we overcome the prime necessity of capital's self-expansion. |
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