The Bush Threat to Your Health

Medi-SCAM - The Bush Threat to Your Health

In this issue...

• South Africa After Ten Years

• Music Review - Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1

• Book Review - After the Empire, by Emmanuel Todd

• The Bush Medicare Nightmare

• Bush Rhetoric, Healthcare Reality

• Marxist Quiz

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Last spring’s elections in South Africa may have marked an important turning point with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) scoring 70 percent of the vote. What does this mean for the direction of the social and political development of South Africa?

Fat Wreck Chords has produced a classic collection of punk rock of varying shades and motifs – metal, industrial, riot grrl, techno-derived, even pop – all uniting to defeat Bush in the 2004 elections.

Fundamentally, the author of After the Empire, Emmanuel Todd, sees US imperialism as a muscle-bound giant with feet of clay, whose military adventures in Iraq and elsewhere, obscure this decline. He scores the US left and the US ruling class alike for their inability to comprehend this reality.

The new Medicare legislation is being hailed as the most significant change in Medicare since its passage in 1965. The legislation has serious economical, philosophical, and programmatic implications that need to be discussed and debated by all Americans. Also, this new legislation has to be debated because of the implications it has for special population groups, the low-income seniors, and African American seniors.

The two main components of the Republican healthcare policy are to increase profits dramatically for their politically connected health corporate friends and to privatize all government services. These two goals mostly work together; but they come into conflict when the profits run up against voters who are angry about the price of and access to health services and prescription drugs.