{"id":20055,"date":"2019-02-19T13:33:31","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T05:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/?p=20055"},"modified":"2019-04-04T21:01:35","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T13:01:35","slug":"hospital-crisis-government-to-blame-not-immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2019\/02\/19\/20055\/","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong hospital crisis: Government to blame, not immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>The racist anti-immigrant politicians are a dangerous hindrance rather than helping this struggle<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Cheung Fan, Socialist Action<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hong Kong is suffering a major crisis at public\nhospitals, with nurses and doctors recently staging protests over underfunding\nand staff shortages. The winter flu season saw a surge in admissions to public\nhospitals. On some days the bed occupancy rate was officially 130 percent, but\nsome hospital employees say the rate was higher, even 150 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clearly, there is a need for organised struggle to force the government to change its policies of starving the poor to feed the rich. The policies offered in the latest budget are mostly cosmetic, such as the new HK$ 10 billion \u201cstabilisation fund\u201d \u2013 money that won\u2019t necessarily ever be spent on the public healthcare sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/52789779_2184848778243931_8754669784919965696_n-2-600x449.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Real situation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The parasitic role of the private medical sector, which\nhas 60 percent of the doctors to treat just 10 percent of Hong Kong\u2019s patients, should be the main target of a change in policy,\nredirecting these resources back to the public sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Protests in February, with several hundred demonstrators,\nthat blamed the health crisis on mainland migrants and called for the repeal of\nthe so-called one-way permit scheme, which allows 150 mainlanders per day to\nmove to Hong Kong, are like a karate kick in the wrong direction! Rather than\nhit the real target \u2013 Carrie Lam\u2019s\nmoney-grabbling government \u2013 they misdirect public\nanger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is the real situation? Government spending on public\nhealthcare is kept below 3 percent of GDP, less than half the average within the\nOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) of wealthy\ncountries. Ordinary grassroots working people cannot afford expensive private\nhospitals, and the underresourced public healthcare system is collapsing under\nthe pressure. Doctors have warned that the government\u2019s latest attacks on elderly CSSA welfare payments will increase\nserious health problems and put further pressure on public hospitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is estimated that mainland immigrants account for only\n0.5 percent of all public hospital users. Research shows the elderly currently\nmake up more than half of total inpatients in the public sector, but\nmainlanders on average are 10 years younger than the general population in this\ncity. Only 6.4 percent (about 11,000) of mainland immigrants are aged 55 or\nabove. In addition, Hong Kong\u2019s overall population\nis growing slowly. In the past ten years, the population has only grown by\nabout 7 percent (about 470,000), slower than Singapore\u2019s\n13 percent. In the same period, Hong Kong\u2019s GDP\nincreased by 60.7 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clearly, Hong Kong has abundant resources to provide\ncomprehensive and high-quality public healthcare, but the money is in the wrong\npockets! Public resources have been plundered by large companies, especially\nreal estate companies. The government has invested large sum of money in\ngigantic white elephant projects and will continue to do so, rather than\nsolving the shortage of public services. Sections of the pro-democracy\nbourgeois politicians (pan democrats) and the media have increasingly turned\ntowards racist and xenophobic populism against mainlanders, in an attempt to\nwin over the former support bases of the \u201clocalists\u201d (Hong Kong nationalists).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Racism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These politicians therefore hide the real causes and\nsolutions to collapsing of public healthcare. This is not something unique to\nHong Kong but is an international phenomenon \u2013\nas shown by the rise of Trump in the US and several \u201cTrump\nclones\u201d in other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The traditional right-wing parties have begun to adopt\nthe policies of the far right \u2013 racism and ultra\nnationalism. None of these parties (and this also applies to Hong Kong\u2019s pan democrats) challenge pro-capitalist governments and the\ndictatorship of big businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The urgent task is to build a strong workers\u2019 movement in Hong Kong, including powerful and militant unions in\nthe health sector, which can defend the interests of medical workers and fight\nfor more resources. This also means linking with patients\u2019 organisations in a mass democratic campaign to save the public\nhealth system from the profiteers, privatisers and the government\u2019s pro-rich antiwelfare agenda. It\u2019s\nnecessary to unite as many workers (including poor mainland immigrants) as\npossible. The racist anti-immigrant politicians are a dangerous hindrance\nrather than helping this struggle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The racist anti-immigrant politicians are a dangerous hindrance rather than helping this struggle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":19765,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Hong Kong hospital crisis: Government to blame, not immigrants - China Worker<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2019\/02\/19\/20055\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hong Kong hospital crisis: Government to blame, not immigrants - 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