Do Iraqi's have a mandate to buy health insurance from private corporations?

[Toucano]

Why are the nations we're building receiving evil "socialism"?

You'd better sit down, folks.

Article 31 of the Iraqi Constitution, drafted by your right-wing Bushies in 2005 and ratified by the Iraqi people, includes state-guaranteed (single payer) healthcare for life for every Iraqi citizen.

Article 31 reads:

"First: Every citizen has the right to health care. The State shall maintain public health and provide the means of prevention and treatment by building different types of hospitals and health institutions.

Second: Individuals and entities have the right to build hospitals, clinics,or private health care centers under the supervision of the State, and this shall be regulated by law."


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-dorlester/guaranteed-health-care-in_b_280528.html&cp

[Libertas1776]

1. We did the same thing

when we were rebuilding Germany and France and elsewhere over 60 years ago. Now universal health care is a right guaranteed in their constitutions (thanks in part to us) and as for us...well we still have shit.

[Toucano]

2. The early 21st century seems the polar opposite of the 20th.

There was a time when corporations were viewed, rightfully, with suspicion.

Now they are the solution to everything.

Private armies, private prisons, private water supplies. Private hospitals and health insurance.

It ain't right.

[Djinn]

3. the French had National Health

in the 1930's - brought to them by (as always) the Union movement - was not a result of US rebuilding after the war - reforms after the war were devised and instituted by the Securite Sociale (dominated again by the union movement)

Germany's universal health harks back to Bismarck's time and HMO type coverage has been banned since before the war, while I'm not as au fait with it as I am with the French, I'm not entirely sure they'd be happy with the characterization that it came at the benevolence of the US post WW2

[dflprincess]

6. I believe we also demanded that Japan add it to their Constituion

after WWII as well.

[elehhhhna]

7. Israel has it too.

[ThomCat]

4. The serious answer is that the US only wanted to be able to

give away the contracts to build the hospitals. Those contracts were the prizes for American and European contractors.

The powers that be in the State Department and the Pentagon didn't give a shit how the hospitals were run after that. Getting everything working smoothly and efficiently is a long and difficult process that is likely to drain public coffers. There is no profit in owning the system while it is still being rebuilt and plugging the holes in public health and well-being.

There are provisions forcing Iraq to sell of public resources though. So later, after the slow and difficult work of making the health care system thorough and complete is done, THEN they might try to force Iraq to sell large parts of it to foreign investors. The health care system just isn't ready to be profitable yet until after it gets rebuilt and matures.


The outraged answer though is ,why the hell does the media let them get away with insisting that Socialized medicine is so evil and doomed to failure here when it is the accepted method for efficiently rebuilding public health everywhere else? That blatant hypocrisy is really astounding. :grr:

[kenny blankenship]

5. So, uh... invading Iraq was, like, um the first step to getting Single Payer in the US?

You could probably claim something like that in an OP and the DU SUCKER PATROL would swallow it whole. So long as you paired it with an explanation like: "and that's why Obama says we have to leave 50,000 troops in Iraq forever."

[polly7]

8. Iraq always had free health care.

The best in the area, with the most up to date hospitals and best educated medical personnel. Years of genocidal sanctions preventing simple medicines from entering, medical equipment from getting in and repairs being made, the Gulf War and Bush's invasion destroyed what was left. Iraq was years ahead in taking care of its citizens health-care.

Iraq's health care system

While some critics focused on the failure to deliver the PHC system, others questioned the whole U.S. approach. Iraq had developed a centralized free health care system in the 1970s using a hospital based, capital-intensive model of curative care. The country depended on large-scale imports of medicines, medical equipment and even nurses, paid for with oil export income, according to a "Watching Brief" report issued jointly by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in July 2003.

Unlike other poorer countries, which focused on mass health care using primary care practitioners, Iraq developed a Westernized system of sophisticated hospitals with advanced medical procedures, provided by specialist physicians. The UNICEF/WHO report noted that prior to 1990, 97 percent of the urban dwellers and 71 percent of the rural population had access to free primary health care; just 2 percent of hospital beds were privately managed.

http://www.alternet.org/world/46856/health_care_in_iraq... /

Independent, secular Iraq had the most advanced scientific-cultural order in the Arab world, despite the repressive nature of Saddam Hussein’s police state. There was a system of national health care, universal public education and generous welfare services, combined with unprecedented levels of gender equality.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=33836

In 1991, Iraq had 1,800 primary health centres, according to the UN children's agency UNICEF.

As a result of US war and sanctions, a decade later that number had fallen to 929, of which a third require serious rehabilitation, one of the most pressing needs to date. The US-British sponsored sanctions and wars against the Iraqi people have killed more than 2 million Iraqi civilians, a third of them were children under the age of five. Iraq's health care and education systems were deliberately targeted for destruction.

http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-hassan011204.htm

Their system was already 'built' and working just fine ................... once, before it was destroyed.

[Toucano]

10. Interesting

I did not know this.

Thanks!

[polly7]

11. You're very welcome. :) nt.

[AzDar]

9. K & R