Ohio politician proposes letting overdose victims die
The policy of “social murder” behind the US health care debate
By Barry Grey
5 July 2017
At
a June 20 meeting of the Middletown, Ohio City Council, Dan Picard, a council
member, offered a novel proposal to contain surging costs associated with a
worsening epidemic of opioid overdoses in the town. Like cities across the
United States, this southwestern Ohio town of some 49,000 people is being
ravaged by the explosive spread of drug addiction linked to opioid pain
killers. This year it has already recorded nearly 600 overdoses, more than in
all of 2016.
Picard,
who is not planning to run for reelection, proposed that the City Council adopt
a “three strikes” policy, under which those who make use of emergency services
two times to deal with an overdose will be denied help the third time. As he
told the Washington Post, “When we get a call, the [emergency
services] dispatcher will ask who is the person who has overdosed. And if it’s
someone who has already been provided services twice, we’ll advise them that
we’re not going to provide further services—and we will not send out an
ambulance.”
Defending
his proposal, Picard said, “I want to send a message to the world that you
don’t want to come to Middletown to overdose… We need to put a fear about
overdosing in Middletown.”
This
call for what amounts to state-sanctioned murder evoked an angry response from
the public in Middletown and wherever else people became aware of it. Numerous
health care organizations and advocacy groups involved in dealing with the drug
abuse epidemic denounced Picard and his proposal.
Alexis
Pleus, the founder of Truth Pharm, a nonprofit that seeks to raise awareness of
the issues surrounding substance abuse, did not mince words in an open letter
to Picard: “To suggest that you withhold emergency medical response to overdose
patients is manslaughter at best and premeditated murder at worst.”
Most
of the American population, however, never learned of the incident. This is
because the establishment media, fixated on its campaign against Russia and
saber-rattling against North Korea, China, Iran and Syria, along with the
political warfare in Washington between the Trump administration and its ruling
class opponents, did not widely report the story.
There
are other political reasons for the downplaying of the story by the
corporate-controlled media. Picard’s brazen suggestion that drug abuse victims
be allowed to die comes uncomfortably close to lifting the lid on a basic
policy question underlying the current official debate on health care “reform.”
Behind
the proposals in the Republicans’ bills to cut costs and boost profits by
gutting Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor, and lifting
the current requirement that insurance companies cover certain “essential
benefits,” lies a deliberate and calculated effort to reduce life expectancy
for working people overall and send many of the old, infirm and mentally or
socially disabled to an early grave.
The
effort, moreover, is bipartisan. The Democrats are pleading for negotiations on
a “compromise” bill to “fix” Obamacare, a euphemism for incorporating the
demands of the insurance monopolies for even higher premiums, copays and
deductibles and fewer restrictions on their ability to gouge the public.
Obamacare itself is a mechanism for cutting costs for corporations and the
government, weakening the system of employer-provided health insurance and
rationing access to health care on a more openly class basis. The Republican
plans build on Obamacare to accelerate the health care counterrevolution it
initiated.
The
corporations, banks and hedge funds that are pushing health care “reform” and
the politicians and policy experts who are doing their bidding are well aware
that many thousands will die needlessly as a result of the measures being
proposed. Medicaid, slated to be cut under the Republican bills by some $800
billion over ten years and terminated as an open-ended entitlement program with
guaranteed benefits, provides about 80 percent of funding to treat drug abuse,
which overwhelmingly affects working class and poor people.
In
2015, some 1.35 million low-income Americans had an opioid use disorder. As it
is, only 25 percent of those people get treated in a year.
Last
year some 60,000 people in the US died from drug overdoses, 60 percent of them
from opioids. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans
under 50. There is no starker barometer of the failure of the capitalist system
and the descent of broad masses of the population into conditions of desperate
social crisis.
Of
the 22 million people who will lose medical coverage under the Senate health
care bill, Medicaid cuts will account for 15 million of them. Moreover, both
the House and Senate bills allow insurance companies to drop coverage of care
for mental health and substance abuse, among other basic services.
Can
there be any doubt that many will die as a result of these cuts? Lynn Cooper,
director of the Drug and Alcohol Division at Pennsylvania’s Rehabilitation and
Community Providers Association, told National Public Radio last month: “It is
a death epidemic all over the country. The loss of Medicaid expansion will be
like the bottom dropping out for thousands of Pennsylvania citizens and their
families.”
The
impact is so self-evident, and public opposition so pervasive, that government
officials are obliged to resort to the most brazen lying when defending their
proposals. Typical was the performance of Health and Human Services Secretary
Tom Price, a notorious and longstanding opponent of basic social program such
as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, in an appearance Sunday on NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program. Of the Republican plan to dismantle Medicaid, he
said, “We want to make certain that Medicaid is a program that can survive.”
While
claiming to be committed to addressing the opioid epidemic, he declared, “We
don’t need to be throwing money” at the crisis.
Ruling
class strategists speak more frankly on specialized think tank web sites meant
for corporate and state officials and their academic advisers. In 2013, the World
Socialist Web Site drew attention to two policy
papers published by the Center for Strategic & International Studies
(CSIS) on the negative consequences for American imperialism and the national
security apparatus of lengthening life spans for ordinary people resulting from
advances in medical science and treatment and government health programs.
As
the CSIS experts explained, the human and social achievement of better health
and longer life for many millions of Americans spells disaster for the American
ruling class and the capitalist system. The authors of the studies insisted
that action had to be taken to deal with the “crisis,” including increasing the
eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security to force the “young elderly,”
those aged 60-69, to forgo retirement and keep working.
One
of the papers, titled “The Budget Crisis and the Civil-Military Challenge to
National Security Spending,” was written by Anthony H. Cordesman, a longtime
CSIS strategist who acts as a consultant for the US State and Defense
departments. Denouncing the siphoning of money away from the military to pay
for medical care for the elderly, Cordesman wrote, “The US does not face any
foreign threat as serious as its failure to come to grips with… the rise in the
cost of entitlement spending.”
Behind
such discussion papers are systematic studies and actuarial tables calculating
the likely effectiveness in shortening life expectancy for workers—a process
that is already underway—of various proposals to “reform” the health care
system.
In
his immortal 1845 work The Condition of the Working Class in
England, Friedrich Engels accurately characterized as “social murder” the
horrific conditions imposed on workers by the capitalist class, which “placed
hundreds of proletarians in such as position that they inevitably meet a too
early and unnatural death…”
The
present crisis-ridden and bankrupt state of American and world capitalism is
once again bringing to the fore the incompatibility of the profit system and
the rule of a financial aristocracy with the satisfaction of human needs such
as health and longevity. The health care counterrevolution in the US is a case
of “social murder” at the hands of the capitalist class.
AMERICA THE ADDICTED!
How America surrendered to Mexico’s invasion, occupation
and looting.
The Mexican drug cartels now control most of America’s
southern borders as LA RAZA “The Race” fascist party expands Mexico’s anchor
baby welfare state from border to open border.
More significant still, a former Mexican official, Jorge Castañeda, threatened to unleash Mexican cartels onto the U.S. to retaliate for deportations of illegal immigrants and the construction of a border wall.
“When we get a call, the [emergency services] dispatcher will ask
who is the person who has overdosed. And if it’s someone who
has already been
provided services twice, we’ll advise them that
we’re not going to provide
further services—and we will not send
out an ambulance.”
Picard states
openly the widespread sentiment in the American ruling class and among its
political flunkeys—that the life of a working class person has a price tag,
which is dropping every day.
Ohio councilman
proposes “three strike policy” to let opioid overdosers die
By Genevieve Leigh
3 July 2017
3 July 2017
A city
councilman in Middletown, Ohio, Dan Picard, has proposed a “three strike”
policy for people who overdose on opioids, under which those reported to have
overdosed on more than two occasions would be denied emergency treatment the
third time. He made the proposal at a City Council meeting on June 20.
In what would
amount to state-sanctioned murder, emergency responders would not be dispatched
and the opioid user would be left to die. As Picard told the Washington Post
on Wednesday: “When we get a call, the [emergency services] dispatcher will ask
who is the person who has overdosed. And if it’s someone who has already been
provided services twice, we’ll advise them that we’re not going to provide
further services—and we will not send out an ambulance.”
Like hundreds
of cities and towns across the US, Middletown, located in southwestern Ohio,
has been wracked by the opioid epidemic. The town, which has a population of
48,791, has already seen nearly 600 overdoses this year, which is more than it
saw in all of 2016.
Defending his
proposal, Picard told the press, “It’s not a proposal to solve the drug
problem. My proposal is in regard to the financial survivability of our city.”
He continued, “If we’re spending $2 million this year and $4 million next year
and $6 million after that, we’re in trouble. We’re going to have to start
laying off. We’re going to have to raise taxes.”
Picard states
openly the widespread sentiment in the American ruling class and among its
political flunkeys—that the life of a working class person has a price tag,
which is dropping every day.
The giant
pharmaceutical companies played a central role in creating the opioid epidemic.
They made billions of dollars in profits by systematically and knowingly
pushing highly addictive opioid medications on the population throughout the
1990’s and early 2000’s.
Now the
epidemic has become a concern for the ruling class, not out of any compassion
for those who suffer, but because it is creating a financial burden for the
state. The proposals currently working their way through Congress to
drastically reduce the availability of medical care for the working class,
particularly by gutting Medicaid, the primary source of funding for the
treatment of drug addiction, are calculated to accomplish on a national scale
what Picard is proposing for Middletown.
Meanwhile,
the pharmaceutical companies continue to profit from the crisis. Part of the
reason emergency care for those who overdose on opioids is so expensive is that
the price of the “miracle drug” Naloxone (trade name Narcan), used to revive
users from overdoses, has skyrocketed over the past decade. The popular
injectable version of the drug has gone from $0.92 a dose to more than $15
since 2007. An auto-injector version is now up to more than $2,000 a dose.
The
pharmaceutical companies’ price-gouging, combined with the increase in demand,
has caused revenues from the sale of Naloxone to jump from $21.3 million
in 2011 to $81.9 million last year, according to data from the
prescription-tracking company IMS Health. It is now costing state and local
governments much more money to save lives.
Picard
pointed to this in a statement defending his proposal, saying, “I want to send
a message to the world that you don’t want to come to Middletown to overdose
because someone might not come with Narcan and save your life. We need to put a
fear about overdosing in Middletown.” He continued, “John Smith obviously doesn’t
care much about his life, but he’s expending a lot of resources and we can’t
afford it.”
As with all
social problems, the opioid epidemic is treated by the political establishment
as the result of the personal failings of individuals. In fact, it, and drug
abuse more generally, are the result of the increasingly dire social conditions
facing broad masses of the people, under conditions of unprecedented and
growing levels of social inequality. These conditions are themselves rooted in
the rapacious drive of the pharmaceutical corporations and the
corporate-financial elite in general for profit, intensified by the worsening
crisis of the capitalist system.
Picard’s
homicidal proposal has evoked an angry response from the public. Middletown
City Manager Douglas Adkins wrote in a blog post Wednesday about the
overwhelming backlash. “We’ve received hate mail, national news coverage and
overloaded voice mail and email in-boxes,” he said.
Many health
care organizations, recovery centers and advocacy groups have spoken out
against Picard’s plan. Truth Pharm, a nonprofit organization that seeks to
raise awareness of the issues surrounding substance abuse, released an open
letter to Picard denouncing his proposal.
Alexis Pleus,
the founder of Truth Pharm, wrote in the letter: “In short, our goal is to save
lives, so, needless to say, we were more than appalled by your recent
proposition to refuse medical treatment to overdose patients. It pains and
infuriates us to see how easily you have turned human lives into dollar signs
and an impact on your budget… To suggest that you withhold emergency medical
response to overdose patients is manslaughter at best and premeditated murder
at worst.”
Pleus spoke
to the World Socialist Web Site about the issues raised by Picard’s
proposal. On the use of Naloxone as a solution, Pleus explained: “At first,
Naloxone and Narcan seemed like a pretty fast and cheap solution to save lives.
And that was true to a point. It is still a very important tool we have to help
people.
“The problem
is that they have never dedicated the follow-up... There is no governmental
body that has given the proper resources necessary to complement the use of
Naloxone. It is not a fix in itself, is not a cure to the epidemic. We set
ourselves up for frustration because we keep using this life-saving device but
don’t ever get to the root causes of addiction. I think ultimately the fault
goes right back to each state government and the federal government as a
whole.”
Pleus told
reporters she wasn’t surprised that lawmakers would propose a measure not aimed
at addressing the epidemic but rather at saving money. “Look at how easy it is
to get legislation to pass when there is money to be made,” she said. “But try
and get something through that simply helps people--it just won’t happen…this
problem does not have a quick cheap fix. But still, all the while, the
pharmaceutical companies are profiting, profiting, profiting.”
When asked
how President Trump’s new health care plan might affect the opioid problem,
Pleus said, “It will be absolutely devastating.” She continued: “At our
organization we try and help people find treatment. About 80 percent of those
we help have Medicaid. If they repeal it, I cannot even fathom what we will do.
The new plan also will not mandate addiction treatment as part of insurance
coverage. I can’t imagine turning away eight of ten people and telling them
there is nothing we can do.”
HEROIN: are you addicted yet?
1 in 7 Legals are!
HEROIN! Mexico’s
Gift to Occupied Aztlan America!
The LA RAZA drug cartels haul back $100 BILLION from
heroin sales.
More significant still, a former Mexican official, Jorge Castañeda, threatened to unleash Mexican cartels onto the U.S. to retaliate for deportations of illegal immigrants and the construction of a border wall.
AMERICA
THE ADDICTED: 1 in 7 are addicted
CAUTION:
GRAPHIC IMAGES!
MEXICO’S
BIGGEST EXPORTS TO U.S.: Heroin, Criminals, Anchor baby breeders for 18 years
of gringo-paid welfare.
AMERICA’S BLUDGEONED YOUTH: Homeless, Hopeless and Addicted…. Will they
start the revolution?
"Public education as a whole came
under brutal attack as part of the Obama administration’s effort to shift the
burden of the financial crisis onto the backs of the working class."
AMERICA
THE ADDICTED: 1 in 7 are addicted
CAUTION:
GRAPHIC IMAGES!
MEXICO’S
BIGGEST EXPORTS TO U.S.: Heroin, Criminals, Anchor baby breeders for 18 years
of gringo-paid welfare.
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