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Tag: US

  • For-Profit US Healthcare System—Once Again—Ranks Dead Last Among Its Peers

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    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Medical staffers tend to patients at a hospital in Houston, Texas on August 18, 2021. (Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    “Our private, profit-driven system means that we are paying more for less,” said one progressive activist.

    A report out Thursday shows that the United States’ for-profit healthcare system still ranks dead last among peer nations on key metrics, including access to care and health outcomes such as life expectancy at birth.

    The new analysis from the Commonwealth Fund is the latest indictment of a corporate-dominated system that leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured and unable to afford life-saving medications without rationing doses or going into debt.

    “Despite spending a lot on healthcare, the United States is not meeting one of the principal obligations of a nation: to protect the health and welfare of its residents,” the report states. “Most of the countries we compared are providing this protection, even though each can learn a good deal from its peers. The U.S., in failing this ultimate test of a successful nation, remains an outlier.”

    People in the U.S., which spends roughly twice as much per capita on healthcare as other rich nations, “live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths,” Commonwealth noted, pointing to frequent “denials of services by insurance companies” and other systematic defects of the American system, including massive administrative costs.

    Meanwhile, insurance giants and pharmaceutical companies are raking in huge profits, benefiting in particular from the growing privatization of Medicare. More than half of the Medicare-eligible population in the U.S. is currently on a privately run Medicare Advantage plan.

    “Our private, profit-driven system means that we are paying more for less,” progressive activist Jonathan Cohn wrote in response to the Commonwealth report.

    Americans live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths.

    Note: To normalize performance scores across countries, each score is the calculated standard deviation from a nine-country average that excludes the US. See “How We Conducted This Study” for more detail.

    Data: Commonwealth Fund analysis.

    Source: David Blumenthal et al., Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System — Comparing Performance in 10 Nations (Commonwealth Fund, Sept. 2024). https://doi.org/10.26099/ta0g-zp66

    The Commonwealth Fund’s findings bolster progressives’ case for transitioning to a Medicare for All system that would provide comprehensive coverage to everyone in the country for free at the point of service. Studies have repeatedly shown that such a program would cost less than the immensely wasteful for-profit system—which is set to drive national healthcare spending to $7.7 trillion per year by 2032—while saving lives.

    Commonwealth observed Thursday that while affordability “is a pervasive problem” in the U.S., Australia “offers free care in all public hospitals, and the nation’s universal Medicare system provides all Australians with coverage for all or part of the cost of [general practitioners] and specialist consultations and diagnostic tests, with additional subsidies available for private hospital care.”

    “The U.S. continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its healthcare sector,” the report continues. “While the other nine countries differ in the details of their systems and in their performance on domains, unlike the U.S., they all have found a way to meet their residents’ most basic health care needs, including universal coverage.”

    Americans face the most barriers to accessing and affording health care.

    Note: To normalize performance scores across countries, each score is the calculated standard deviation from a nine-country average that excludes the US. See “How We Conducted This Study” for more detail.

    Data: Commonwealth Fund analysis.

    Source: David Blumenthal et al., Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System — Comparing Performance in 10 Nations (Commonwealth Fund, Sept. 2024). https://doi.org/10.26099/ta0g-zp66

    With the U.S. presidential election less than two months away, neither 2024 candidate for the two major parties has outlined a detailed healthcare proposal thus far.

    Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, said during last week’s debate in Philadelphia that he merely has “the concepts of a plan,” while Harris—who once co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation in the Senate—said she “absolutely” supports “private healthcare options” and wants to “maintain and grow the Affordable Care Act.”

    Just days after the debate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio)—Trump’s running mate—said the Republican nominee prefers a system in which “a young American” and a “65-year-old American with a chronic condition” are not placed in “the same risk pools,” suggesting a rollback of the ACA’s protections for people with preexisting conditions.

    “You can’t really say people with preexisting conditions are protected if they are in a separate insurance risk pool and can be charged exorbitant premiums,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the research group KFF, wrote in response to Vance’s comments.

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • Venezuela announces dismantling of CIA-backed coup plot, arrest of active-duty Navy Seal

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    Original article by republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    The coup plot comes just a month and a half after President Nicolás Maduro was reelected in the presidential election, which to date, the US has refused to recognize

    In a press conference given on September 14, Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello announced that authorities had dismantled an operation reportedly backed by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States and the National Intelligence Center of Spain, which sought to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, Cabello, and other government officials. The minister announced that Venezuelan authorities had seized 400 weapons from the US and arrested 14 mercenaries who were involved in the plot. Among the arrested is Wilber Joseph Castañeda, an active US military officer and Navy Seal. Two Spanish citizens were reportedly also arrested, José María Basua and Andrés Badasbe.

    Officials stated that according to a document they seized from one of the detainees, the plot included attacking the Miraflores Palace and other public institutions, in addition to carrying out sabotage actions against various public services to generate chaos.

    According to officials, those arrested possessed between 10-12 weapons in their homes that were set to be used in the destabilization plan. Cabello noted that many of those arrested also have links to Venezuela’s far-right opposition network.

    He added that the weapons seized by authorities were brought to the country in “apparently legal” shipments and received by groups linked to the extreme right.

    One of the leaders of the illegal arms trafficking network in the country, Cabello claimed, is a man who is already a fugitive from Venezuelan justice, Iván Simonovis. “Because of the capture of this weaponry here in Venezuela, they have taken actions in other countries that have included the murder of people. Simonovis knows what I am talking about,” he stated.

    Venezuela has demanded that the United States government respond to the incident and “clarify the use of its agencies and the use of its territory to traffic weapons aimed at overthrowing a democratically elected government.”

    Cabello declared: “The United States is behind this operation, they are delivering these weapons so that they circulate freely and reach Venezuela…They can say what they want, their agents are confessing. Castañeda is the head of the operation [of] the CIA here and they have a link with criminal groups in Venezuela.”

    Regarding the Venezuelan state’s intelligence capacities, Cabello stated: “Let the world know that we are going to use all the necessary mechanisms to repel, to defeat these groups of mercenaries, of terrorists who try to undermine peace and order in Venezuela…prepare to be defeated again.”

    Original article by republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • People’s movements across the world launch campaign of solidarity with Venezuela

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    Original article republished from people dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Venezuelan people marched in the rain on July 30 in defense of the electoral results. Photo: Zoe Alexandra

    Social and workers’ movements across the world have launched a campaign to stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people as they face a wave of attacks following the presidential elections.

    On August 9, the ALBA Movimientos, a platform of social and political movements from across the Americas and the Caribbean, the International Peoples’ Assembly, the Simon Bolivar Institute, and the Assembly of Caribbean Peoples, launched a campaign titled: “For Democracy and Sovereignty: Hands Off Venezuela!” The campaign comes in the aftermath of Venezuela’s presidential election and a wave of seemingly coordinated attacks from right-wing political actors, mainstream media, and US and its allies.

    The launch document states that, for several months, a media campaign has been created to question the legitimacy of the elections in the Caribbean country. “From the hegemonic media, with political and diplomatic strategies, it has been sought to install an idea of the illegitimacy of the recent Venezuelan electoral process,” states the communiqué.

    The joint statement affirms that the campaign mentioned above against the legitimacy of the Venezuelan electoral process has been shaped from several communicational fronts: creating doubts about the technological capacity of the electoral machines, reinforcing the 930 economic sanctions against Venezuela, generating violence in the streets and illegally self-declaring González Urrutia as president of the country, among others.

    The geopolitical importance of Venezuela, both for its geographic location and vast natural resources, are at the center of the current dispute, the organizations argue. “It is impossible [to understand the situation of] Venezuela without placing it in the regional and global geopolitical context: its privileged place in world oil production, its common goods placed at the service of the people, the place it occupies in the multipolar world together with the emerging countries, and of course, its leadership of a project of union and regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean that gives continuity to the defeat of the FTAA and keeps alive the horizon of continental sovereignty far from the designs of the United States”.

    In this way, the document invites progressive and revolutionary organizations to combat the media campaign imposed by the national and international opposition to Venezuela, which, according to the document, is directly aligned with the imperialist interests of the United States.

    On August 9, the launch day of the campaign, the movement platforms have called on organizations across the globe to mobilize on the streets and on social media in support of Venezuela.

    South African workers speak out in support of Venezuela

    The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), in a press release issued on August 8, 2024, congratulated the Venezuelan people for holding free and fair elections, as well as congratulating the re-election with more than 51% of the votes of Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela.

    NUMSA also questions the media campaign against the legitimacy of the electoral process that could lead to a coup d’état in Venezuela. According to the communiqué, “These media houses are not neutral. Their role is to advance the interests of capital and to promote US imperialism and hegemony. It is not in the interest of Western powers to endorse the elections in Venezuela…We are deeply concerned that US propaganda is being reproduced by many media houses that have sadly been trapped into reinforcing attempts at a coup by imperialism against the will of the Venezuelan people.”

    In addition, the NUSMA communiqué insists on the close relationship that the Venezuelan opposition has with the geopolitical interests of the United States, including the friendship that María Corina Machado has professed with the Zionist government of Israel; “The United States does not have a commendable history in defending the dignity of most people. Today, we can take one look at the US-backed genocide against the Palestinian people to know this. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that the right-wing opposition coup leader in Venezuela is a Zionist”.

    Likewise, the NUMSA communiqué recognizes the great economic and geostrategic value of Venezuela in current international relations, which is why there are imperial powers that seek to control the political future of Venezuela at any cost so that the recognition of the elections would be a way for the people to reaffirm their sovereignty and their ability to decide their future without the interference of other countries: “the US has set its sights on the enormous mineral wealth of Venezuela and seems determined to expropriate these through the imposition of a puppet regime under the leadership of Edmundo González. Against this backdrop, all progressive forces must reaffirm their unwavering commitment to the sovereignty of Venezuela. We call on our government, media, governments, and media houses worldwide to uphold the principles of peace, democracy, and national self-determination by acknowledging the outcomes of the Venezuelan election.”

    Anti-imperialist and progressive movements from across the world are gearing up for the international campaign to condemn the so-called hybrid war against Venezuela and express their support to its struggle for sovereignty and democracy.

    Original article republished from people dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • US activist shot by Israeli forces in West Bank

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    Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead by Israeli forces (Photo via Wafa)

    The shooting occurred while Israeli forces were violently suppressing a weekly protest against an Israeli settlement

    26-year-old US activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi succumbed to her wounds on Friday after being shot by Israeli forces at a protest in Beita, to the south of Nablus. Headlines from Western mainstream media sources have already attempted to obscure who killed the solidarity activist, with CNN stating “American activist shot dead during protest in West Bank, Palestinian officials say,” CBS News writing, “American woman Aysenur Eygi killed in Israeli-occupied West Bank, US confirms,” and BBC writing. “American activist shot dead in occupied West Bank.”

    The shooting occurred while Israeli forces were violently suppressing a weekly protest against an Israeli settlement. Israeli forces employed live ammunition, stun grenades, and tear gas, and also resulted in the injury of an 18-year-old Palestinian man via shrapnel. Eygi was reportedly part of the Faz’a campaign, which aims to mobilize international solidarity activists on the ground in Palestine to protect Palestinian farmers from Israeli settlers and military forces. Eygi was also an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led organization committed to resisting the occupation. 

    ISM released a statement condemning Eygi’s killing, quoting multiple ISM members. ISM volunteer Mariam Dag (a pseudonymn) witnessed the shooting, and said ““We were peacefully demonstrating alongside Palestinians against the colonization of their land, and the illegal settlement of Evyatar. The situation escalated when the Israeli army began to fire tear gas and live ammunition, forcing us to retreat. We were standing on the road, about 200 meters from the soldiers, with a sniper clearly visible on the roof. Our fellow volunteer was standing a bit further back, near an olive tree with some other activists. Despite this, the army intentionally shot her in the head.”

    Dag continued, “This is just another example of the decades of impunity granted to the Israeli government and army, bolstered by the support of the US and European governments, who are complicit in enabling genocide in Gaza. Palestinians have suffered far too long under the weight of colonization. We will continue to stand in solidarity and honor the martyrs until Palestine is free.”

    The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the “brutal execution committed today by Israeli occupation forces,” stating that “the ministry views this act as part of the ongoing crimes perpetrated by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people, including genocide, forced displacement, and the targeting of individuals who show solidarity with the Palestinian cause.”

    The Ministry “calls on the international community, human rights organizations, and global institutions to take urgent action to provide international protection for Palestinians. The Ministry urges these entities to fulfill their legal and moral responsibilities by addressing violations, including genocide, forced displacement, illegal settlements, and extrajudicial killings, and to hold Israeli war criminals accountable.”

    It is unclear how the United States will respond, beyond offering their “deepest condolences.” Israel has killed several US citizens, including two Palestinian-American teenagers earlier this year, Mohammad Khdour and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, both 17 years old, also shot by Israeli forces. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken again offered condolences for the teenagers “who reportedly were killed,” but did nothing more than call for an investigation. 

    “We’ve made clear that with regard to the incidents you’ve alluded to, there needs to be an investigation. We need to get the facts. And if appropriate, there needs to be accountability,” Blinken said at the time. 

    The families were unsatisfied with the US’s response. “We don’t need talking, man,” said Adnan Khdour, uncle to Mohammad Khdour, killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank. “We need something. We want to see something.” The US has never conditioned aid to Israel based on the killing of a US citizen. 

    Eygi’s killing recalls the high-profile case of Israel’s murder of US activist Rachel Corrie in 2003, who was run over by a bulldozer trying to demolish a Palestinian home in Rafah. The United States did nothing to punish Israel, despite US officials themselves claiming that the Israeli investigation into Corrie’s death was not “credible.” In fact, the US itself is complicit in the killing as the Caterpillar bulldozer which killed Corrie was supplied by the US as part of its aid to Israel.

    The Party for Socialism and Liberation, a US-based socialist political party active in the Palestine solidarity movement, said of Eygi’s killing: “This killing, like so many others, was carried out thanks to weaponry provided by the United States. We demand the Biden administration end all aid to this genocidal regime. The killers of Aysenur should be brought to justice, alongside the killers of thousands of Palestinians.”

    Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • Kamala Harris supports Israel’s Gaza genocide

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    ‘No,’ Kamala Harris Says to Withholding Arms From Israel

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

    Bodies of Palestinians, including babies, who were killed in the Israeli army’s attack on the Nuseirat Refugee Camp are brought to the Aqsa Martyrs Hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 30, 2024. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “Harris is saying she will reject 77% of Democrats, 61% of Americans, international law, domestic U.S. law, and basic humanity to continue the flow of weapons to Israel while it stands accused of genocide,” said one analyst.

    Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris said in a CNN interview that aired late Thursday that, if elected in November, she would not change the Biden administration’s policy of steadfast military support for Israel, rejecting widespread calls for an arms embargo to help bring about an end to the devastating assault on Gaza.

    “I’m unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defense and its ability to defend itself, and that’s not gonna change,” said Harris, recounting the horrors of the Hamas-led October 7 attack. “Israel had a right, has a right to defend itself.”

    Acknowledging that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” the vice president responded “no” when CNN‘s Dana Bash asked whether a Harris administration would implement a “change in policy in terms of arms” and withhold even “some” weapons shipments to Israel.

    Watch:

    The CNN appearance marked Harris’ first major television interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, a change at the top of the party’s 2024 ticket that Palestinian rights advocates hoped would open the door to a fundamental shift away from the Biden administration’s Gaza policy—which has been to arm Israel to the teeth while tepidly pressuring the country’s far-right government to protect civilians and agree to a cease-fire deal.

    “The vice president’s statement was morally indefensible and politically shortsighted as the lack of American consequences for Netanyahu’s horrific assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza has emboldened Israel to now invade the West Bank,” Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, co-founders of the Uncommitted National Movement, said in a statement Friday. “Vice President Harris must turn the page from one of the most glaring foreign policy failures of our time by aligning with the American majority that opposes sending weapons to Israel’s assault on Gaza.”

    Despite Bash’s characterization of calls for an arms embargo against Israel as a demand from the “progressive left,” survey data has shown that a majority of U.S. voters oppose sending weapons to Israel as it commits appalling war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. Since October, the U.S. has sent Israel over 50,000 tons of weaponry.

    “Harris is saying she will reject 77% of Democrats, 61% of Americans, international law, domestic U.S. law, and basic humanity to continue the flow of weapons to Israel while it stands accused of genocide,” Middle East scholar Assal Rad said late Thursday, citing the results of a recent CBS News/YouGov poll.

    A separate poll commissioned by the IMEU Policy Project suggested that voters in key U.S. battleground states would be more likely to vote for a Democratic nominee who pledged to withhold weapons from Israel.

    The CNN interview aired as Israel continued its multi-day assault on the West Bank, a deadly military campaign that the head of the United Nations and others warned could become an extension of the nearly 11-month war on Gaza, during which Israel has killed more than 40,600 people, displaced 90% of the enclave’s population, and sparked famine across the territory.

    On Thursday, Israel’s military killed five Palestinians in an airstrike on a vehicle convoy of the Washington, D.C.-based American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) agency. It is a violation of U.S. law to provide weaponry to a country obstructing the delivery of American humanitarian aid.

    The attack on the ANERA convoy came a day after Israeli forces opened fire on a World Food Program vehicle, forcing the U.N. agency to suspend employee movement in Gaza.

    Harris’ refusal to express openness to an arms embargo against a military that has repeatedly targeted aid and healthcare workers, journalists, and other civilians sparked immediate backlash from Palestinian rights advocates, including at least one member of Congress.

    Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American in the U.S. Congress, said Harris’ answer signaled that “war crimes and genocide will continue.”

    Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, called the Democratic nominee’s answer on Gaza “terrible” and “out of touch with voters, especially those in key battleground states who Harris needs to feel motivated to go to the polls.”

    “Poll after poll after poll tells us that a majority of Americans and even more key Democratic constituencies want the US to stop giving arms to Israel that it’s using to kill and displace Palestinian families,” Lieberman added. “Not sending bombs to Israel is politically expedient and—quite obviously!—the morally correct thing to do for anyone reading the daily headlines of Israeli massacres being done with U.S. weapons.”

    In an op-ed for Common Dreams on Friday, RootsAction national director Norman Solomon warned that “time is running out for Kamala Harris to distance herself from U.S. policies that enable Israel to continue with mass murder and genocide in Gaza.”

    “Polling shows that a pivot toward moral decency would improve her chances of defeating Donald Trump,” Solomon wrote. “But during her CNN interview Thursday night, Harris remained in lockstep with President Biden’s unconditional arming of Israel.”

    This story has been updated to include a statement from the Uncommitted National Movement.

    Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.