Chicago’s capitalism, a health hazard

Capitalism will never be able to guarantee an acceptable level of health for the overwhelming majority of the working class. By transforming essential medical services like prescription drugs and surgery into commodities to buy and sell for profit, the capitalist bosses who run healthcare ensure that if workers and their families can’t pay, disease, disability, and death are the common consequences.
The city of Chicago, despite having a booming health care industry valued close to $70 billion, has led the way in using racist attacks as the cutting edge to decrease the overall health of workers across the region.  From racist police murder to the closure of health care facilities that serve mostly Black and immigrant workers, the city has mirrored the overall trend of capitalism in denying even a remotely healthy existence to an increasing number of our class.
This will continue to be the harsh reality until the international working masses, led by the Progressive Labor Party, overthrow the profit system through violent revolution and establish a worker-led communist society in its place. Only then will workers live in a world not only where health care access is guaranteed for all, but where the social problems that lead to racist and sexist health outcomes are eradicated through collectivity and organizing the masses.
Racist capitalist unemployment leads to death, mental illness
The racism inherent under capitalism, which is used by the bosses to divide workers so that they can maximize profit, inevitably leads to racist inequalities in health. Conservative estimates place the unemployment rate for Black men between the ages of 20-24 in Chicago to be nearly 40 percent (Chicago Tribune, 5/12). This scarcity of jobs funnels thousands of Black youth into a street economy, exposing them to inter-gang violence. As of July 15, over 271 people have been killed and over 1,500 have been shot in the city (Chicago Tribune, 7/16).
Beyond just the physical and emotional toll that this violence inflicts on the immediate victim, is the ripple effect in mental health that occurs in the Black and Latin communities of the city where the majority of the shootings occur. A study sample of Black women in a neighborhood on the city’s south side showed a rate of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) nearing 60 percent. A significant portion of those diagnosed with PTSD in the study reported having a loved one directly impacted by physical violence (Chicago Magazine, 12/16/16). This violence stems ultimately from capitalism and its government, often directly in the case of police shootings.
For those workers who would hope to access some mental health resources to help deal with this type of intense strain that capitalism causes, liberal racist Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other Democratic Party city bosses ensured years ago that very few if any are available to those working-class communities most directly affected. The Hill reports:
Illinois cut $113.7 million in funding for mental health services from 2009 to 2012, which resulted in closing two inpatient facilities, six of twelve mental health clinics and several community health agencies. Four of the six agencies that closed were on the South and West sides of the city, where the majority of violence occurs, and where such services are desperately needed (6/26/17).
Instead of mental health clinics, more and more workers are funneled into Cook County Jail, the fourth largest jail in the U.S., where at least one-third of the inmates have a diagnosed mental illness (WTTW, 11/2/17).
Bosses shred safety net, attack immigrant workers
The Cook County Health and Hospitals System, a city-run network that provides medical services to the city’s working class, uninsured/underinsured, and undocumented workers and their families, proposed cuts to the 2018 budget in upwards of $10 million dollars (Chicago Sun-Times, 11/17/17). These cuts were deemed “necessary” by the racist city bosses, who state they need to cover a $200 million dollar deficit after the county’s anti-worker, sweetened beverage tax scheme crashed and burned at the end of last year (See CHALLENGE, 10/27/17).
The racist CEOs of the city’s “safety net” hospitals, such as Dr. Jay Shannon of Stroger Hospital and Karen Teitelbaum of Mount Sinai Hospital, have the nerve to make statements about how much they “care” about undocumented workers in press releases. Meanwhile, they attack those very same workers by cutting services that they claim are not “cost-effective,” like when both hospitals shuttered their inpatient pediatrics units in 2017. Abrupt changes such as these force immigrant workers to lose familiar health care providers as well as travel farther distances to private healthcare systems which are less likely to accept insurance programs such as Medicaid.  
This lack of access can make the difference of life and death for workers who face worsening health problems related to the ongoing threat of raids and arrests via the massive deportation apparatus of the capitalist ruling class. Even though the Chicago liberal bosses tout the status of “sanctuary city,” this flimsy designation hasn’t protected scores of the undocumented from the reality of deportation, including over 150 immigrant workers who were rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over a six-day period in May (Washington Post, 5/29).
The heightened sense of anxiety and stress of living under these fascist conditions not only contributes to an increased incidence of chronic conditions such as hypertension and mental illness; it also decreases the likelihood that immigrant workers will feel comfortable going to a medical facility and voluntarily offering up personal information for fear that it will be used by authorities for deportation.
Such is the nature of this racist, sexist profit system: making it nearly as impossible for our class to live healthily as it is to seek treatment. As communists in PLP, we say that a system that can’t guarantee healthcare for workers doesn’t deserve to exist!
Building communist revolution essential to workers’ health
Although the overall trend of healthcare access and health outcomes, in Chicago and beyond, reflects growing racist inequality for our class, workers and students in the city continue to challenge the bosses and their system through militant fightback. A collective of community activists, mostly Black youth from the city’s south side, led a protracted campaign over recent years that forced the bosses to re-open a trauma center at the University of Chicago. University public health students have published research and organized teach-ins and rallies around racist police violence as a public health crisis. Hospital workers throughout the greater city area have built the fight through their healthcare unions to demand safer staffing, higher wages, and affordable health insurance plans from the hospital bosses. Comrades from PLP have been in the thick of many of these struggles, offering leadership and a communist political analysis whenever possible.
The phenomenal gains in worker life expectancy, infant and mother mortality, and public health that occurred after the Russian and Chinese revolutionaries won state power must continue to inspire us to build these struggles against the capitalists and their deadly system. The concept of health was no longer individualized with a price tag; it was understood as something not to be connected to money and profit, but rather the experience of collective development and struggle. When millions and millions of workers are won again to this truly revolutionary outlook, our future will be very healthy indeed.