Tuesday, April 10, 2018

In Russia, Healthcare is a Right

Since 1996, healthcare has been a national right in Russia.  In law.  As it certainly was during the Soviet era.

So much for those who say Russia is anti-socialist pure-cowboy-capitalist evil, which though "liberal" and maybe even "left liberal" is still part of the the fundamentally imperialist "Russia is Evul" chorus.  What's it ours to say, anyway, about the way they run themselves, isn't the important measure of evul how much death and destruction one is dealing out elsewhere, mostly?  Anything that doesn't recognize that context, foremost, and the tendency of the US to demonize the tiniest (and quite often fake) evul elsewhere (while often ignoring the real stuff at home, or even in context) to justify war, including such things as sanctions and de-diplomacizing, which are cold war.

Anyway, neoliberal Yelsin was nevertheless trying to privatize everything, and healthcare funding was set to $96 per person.  Putin (often said here to be even more evul capitalist) actually increased the public health service funding tenfold by 2013, a significant portion of national income.

The wonderful US sanctions and the like have taken a toll since then, and public healthcare spending has (had?) fallen somewhat.  There is also a private system, through which richer people get prompter and possibly better service.

So it isn't therefore perfect, as if we were the ones to judge.

And those sanctions have done what for us, exactly?

Oh, yes, the military industrial complex has been on a roll.

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