Malaysia: Capitalism kills
By S.Arutchelvan, Socialist Party of Malaysia.
K.Murale died at the Selangor Medical Centre because his family did not have enough money to stimulate the private hospital to give him adequate treatment he needs. His life was kept in ransom while his wife was told to put in a deposit first. The pleading and appeal of a desperate wife did not move the hospital authorities. He died. He was 39 years old and leaves behind two children aged 11 and 12.
His death exposed the barbarism of the private hospital and shocked many people. Many people expressed disbelieve. To those shocked, ? Welcome to the world of Capitalism? Murale?s death is only the known death, there are many others who perished the same way. The naked truth of the capitalist system where market forces and profit is the GOD to be worshiped and unless you don?t have money, you are better dead than alive.
This is not the first case I have come across. There are numerous cases where hospitals just don?t want to move unless you pay them. There is no value for life at all. Sometime ago, my friends brought some teenagers who met with a serious accident to a private hospital. The private hospital were more interested to find out who is going to pay the bill rather than treating the blood which were oozing out from their semi-conscious body.
That is why today we have private hospitals growing like mushrooms. Some of them can be easily mistaken for some 5 star hotels or palaces. These hospitals don?t serve to save lives but has become a lucrative business and a profit venture for capitalist. That is the system our health system is heading towards. After slowly privatisation some sections of the hospitals, cooperatisation of some hospitals, trying to turn certain parts of the hospital into private wing, promoting health tourism ?.our once respected health system is going to the dogs.
Today we have 75% of the population going to Public Hospitals and one quarter going to private hospitals and yet we have 4 MRI machines in Public sector compared to 23 in the private hospitals. 19 scan machines in the Public hospitals and 67 in the Private hospitals.
The only logical way for the Government to redress this inequality would be for the Government to make these facilities assessable to the majority. But again, the logic is the Government would not have the will to acquire this from the capitalist class who owns the resources. That is why you have even middle class families like Murale?s pleading for life at the private hospital. What else about the rest, the poor, the migrant workers, the refugees and the many more.
When hundred of workers demonstrated at the Health Ministry on 23 December 2004, protesting the move to privatise the hospital dispensaries, the Health Minister, Chua Soi Lek proudly said that Health care is never free anywhere in the world. No country in the world it is free except in Cuba. Yes indeed, if Murale was in Cuba or in any other country which practices a socialist model health system, he would have been still alive and the Malaysian population won?t have the outcry.
Today everytime a Doctor examines you in a private hospital, everytime you need to press a button to call for assistance, every second oxygen is pumped into your body, every drop of drugs which you intake, every breath of air you inhale, you burn thousands of ringgit. This is the naked truth of capitalism. When critical life saving drugs would cost hundreds to thousands of dollars due to pattern rights and other capitalist controls.
Health is no more a social issue, it is a commercial issue. It is a system which breeds on the poverty of the people.
150 years ago, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels said, Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence, industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. This is how they analysed capitalism rule will move to and yet today we see much truth in it.
Looking at the world today. With so much technology and advancement, yet there is so much poverty and famine. The United States, a super power and vanguard of world capitalism, bullying every nation which comes by its way but yet finds that it cannot give dignity and humanity to its own people in New Orleans. There must be something really wrong in where the priority has been placed.
Rosa Luxemberg, said that. ?Capitalism is an exploitative social system whose contradiction must lead either to socialism or barbarism?. Murale?s death makes me ponder where we can end up. The choice is for us to think about.
