Nearly five million removed from Medicaid have no health insurance

Kevin Reed

On Friday, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) reported that nearly one-quarter of those who were disenrolled from Medicaid by federal and state governments in the US over the past year are now uninsured. This means that approximately 4.6 million people, many of whom are children, who previously qualified for Medicaid, have no health insurance.

The publicly owned Greenwood Leflore Hospital is pictured on Oct. 21, 2022, in Greenwood, Miss. [AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis]

The KFF report is based on updated findings of its ongoing “Survey of Medicaid Unwinding” which has monitored the impact of the purging of Medicaid rolls since the Biden administration implemented its post-pandemic eligibility rules beginning on April 1, 2023.

A news release on Friday states, “Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of adults who say they were disenrolled from Medicaid since early 2023 report being uninsured now, finds a new KFF national survey examining how the unwinding affected enrollees.”

According to previous data released by KFF, at least 20 million low income people have been kicked off Medicaid since the unwinding was started. The KFF data shows that 70 percent of those removed from the government health insurance program, or 14 million people, were left temporarily with no insurance.

So far, 47 percent, or 9.4 million have been re-enrolled in Medicaid, while 30 percent, or 6 million people, had another form of health coverage such as an employer-sponsored plan, Medicare, self-funding on the health insurance marketplace (Obamacare) and or through the US military. The balance, or 4.6 million people, have no insurance at all.

According to Joan Alker, executive director and co-founder of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, the actual number of disenrolled and uninsured is likely to be much higher. Alker told Associated Press the undercount is because the KFF survey does not consider children, who have been one of the biggest groups affected by unwinding.

Alker added, “The question is, ‘How long are they going to stay uninsured?’ The states who want to cover their citizens are going to have to do a lot of work to get them back.”

At least half of those who were enrolled in Medicaid prior to the unwinding said they had heard little or nothing about the process that was being put in place by the Biden administration and the state governments. One of the major reasons that people have been purged from Medicaid rolls is that the re-enrollment process is complicated.

When a federal national health emergency was declared at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, rules for eligibility for the government’s Medicaid health insurance program for low income families and individuals were expanded. These rules included a provision that said once someone qualifies for the program, they cannot be removed due to changes in their economic or other circumstances that would previously have made them ineligible.

According to health insurance experts, the Biden administration’s Medicaid unwinding initiative is the largest loss of health insurance coverage in US history. This attack on public health is also taking place as the Democrats and Republicans are cutting funds from critical social programs, claiming there is no money, while they are committing untold billions of dollars for the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and for the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

The KFF survey says that one third of Medicaid enrollees have not completed their renewal process. The news release states, “About a third (35 percent) who tried to renew their coverage describe the process as difficult, and nearly half (48 percent) describe it as at least somewhat stressful. A majority (56 percent) of those disenrolled say they skipped or delayed care or prescriptions while attempting to renew their Medicaid coverage.”

Among the most persistent problems that enrollees have had with renewal of their Medicaid coverage have been excessive wait times on the phone and issues with their paperwork. According to Michelle Levander, founding director of the Center for Health Journalism at the University of Southern California, many of those disenrolled may have been eligible for Medicaid, “but they’re caught in a bureaucratic nightmare of confusing forms, notices sent to wrong addresses and other errors.”

Meanwhile, not having health insurance in the US can be financially catastrophic for families. As Sara Rosenbaum of George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services told the Associated Press, healthcare costs of any kind can be a major burden for low-income Americans. “Suddenly, a visit that didn’t cost you anything (before)—let’s say it’s going to cost you $5. That $5 can be $500 for some folks,” she explained.

Kate McEvoy, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, told CBS News that millions of people are currently being re-determined for eligibility, and that has swamped some state call centers. McEvoy said efforts by states to reach out to enrollees prior to the unwinding with media campaigns, texts, emails and apps were ineffective.

Some former Medicaid enrollees are only finding out that they no longer have coverage when they go to the doctor. For example, Indira Navas of Miami, told CBS News she learned her 6-year-old son Andres had been disenrolled from Florida’s Medicaid program when she took him to an appointment in March. She had scheduled the appointment months prior and expressed frustration that her son is uninsured and unable to receive treatment for his medical condition.

Additionally, Navas also said Florida representatives could not explain why her 12-year-old daughter, Camila, remained covered by Medicaid even though the children live in the same household with their parents. “It doesn’t make sense that they would cover one of my children and not the other,” she said.

Thousands could be deported under Australian government’s draconian immigration bill

Mike Head

The Australian Labor government remains intent on pushing a reactionary non-citizen “removal” bill through parliament as quickly as possible despite outrage in immigrant communities and overwhelming opposition by refugee, migrant and human rights groups.

That was clear at a one-day Senate committee hearing on the bill on Monday, even as a flood of 102 submissions exposed the widespread impact of the unprecedented legislation on immigrant families, shattering the government’s claims that it would have limited effects.

Accommodation in the Nauru offshore processing facility. [Photo by DIAC images / CC BY 2.0]

Testifying in defence of the government’s bill, Home Affairs department officials admitted that up to 5,000 non-citizens could face removal from Australia, a figure far higher than the government’s earlier misleading statements that fewer than 1,000 people would be affected.

These non-citizens could be given ministerial directives to cooperate with their forced deportation, including by signing or producing documents, or face up to five year’s jail, a punishment that human rights organisations stated had no precedent in Australian law.

Home Affairs representatives said the bill could apply to 4,463 people on bridging visas and 150 to 200 people in immigration detention. It also apply to 152 people released from detention due to a High Court ruling last November that indefinite detention is unconstitutional, and 99 people released pre-dating the High Court decision.

This may be another serious underestimate. Testifying before the committee, Human Rights Law Centre senior lawyer Laura John said the victims could include almost 10,000 people who arrived in Australia in 2012 or 2013 and had their refugee claims rejected in a “fast-tracked” assessment process.

The one-day hearing by the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee was convened after the Labor government failed in its initial bid, just before Easter, to ram the Migration Amendment (Removals and Other Measures) Bill through both houses of parliament in less than 36 hours, making a mockery of any pretence of democracy.

The Liberal-National Coalition had committed to assist the rapid passage of the bill, but then referred it to the Senate committee to ensure its legal effectiveness. The Coalition’s bipartisan support for the bill’s repressive content remains.

Despite the outpouring of opposition reflected in the submissions, Immigration Minister Andrew Giles repeated the government’s assertions that the legislation was simply needed to close a “loophole.”

During the hearing, Home Affairs department secretary Stephanie Foster doubled down, insisting that the bill was essential. She also revealed that coerced removals were already common—2,184 non-citizens were “voluntarily” deported in 2023, with 90 forcibly removed.

Piumetharshika Kaneshan, a 19-year-old nursing student, told the inquiry she was one of the people who “might be jailed if this bill is passed into law.” She said her family had been “failed by the fast-track” visa assessment process, with their claims of needing protection from Sri Lanka rejected because authorities “said we were safe because of my father” who had now died.

“This bill would put us in jail if we don’t go back to Sri Lanka,” she said. “We consider ourselves Australian. We thought the Australian community accepted us.”

In one of the wide range of submissions denouncing the bill, the Migrant Workers Centre said: “Many BVE [bridging visa] holders who may be subject to the Bill have resided within our community for more than a decade. They have built their lives here, and some might have children born in Australia who are now citizens. Irrespective of their visa status, these people are fundamentally part of the community. The prospect of them receiving a removal order and facing incarceration for not self-deporting is profoundly inhumane.”

The bill confers a virtually unlimited power on the immigration minister to coerce any visa holder to assist with their own deportation—and that of their children. Anyone who fails to obey a directive, which could include facing questioning by officials, faces a mandatory one-year prison term and a $93,000 fine. They could be jailed for up to five years, and then imprisoned repeatedly if they still did not obey.

These are police-state powers. In its submission, the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law stated: “There is no precedent in Australian law for a failure to comply with a direction resulting in mandatory imprisonment—not even in the context of terrorism offences.”

In addition, being a refugee fleeing persecution would not be a “reasonable excuse” for failing to follow a directive. That is a flagrant violation of the international Refugee Convention. Moreover, the minister can overturn a previous finding that a person is a refugee to “whom Australia has non-refoulement obligations.”

The bill would also give the government the power to impose blanket travel bans, barring entry visas to people from designated “removal concern countries.” Those mooted by government sources and the media for listing include Iran, China, Russia and South Sudan.

That has led to widespread dismay in immigrant communities because such bans would have a devastating impact on the many families in Australia from these and any other listed countries, potentially barring them from ever seeing their relatives again.

Not accidentally, the US and its military allies have named these countries as “uncooperative” for not accepting involuntary deportations of their citizens. These allegations and threats of bans are primarily directed against countries that are Washington’s war targets, above all Iran, Russia and China, regarded as the chief threats to its global hegemony.

Most immediately, the bill seeks to keep up to 200 people locked away indefinitely in immigration detention. It is designed to nullify a further High Court challenge, which began its hearing today, by an Iranian detainee who has refused to return to Iran, fearing persecution.

The government is trying to further thwart last November’s High Court ruling, which partially overturned the barbaric three-decade regime, maintained by successive Labor and Coalition governments, of indefinite immigration detention. As a result of that judgment, the government had to release 152 detainees because there was no reasonable short-term prospect of deporting them.

Labor’s measures since November, backed by the Coalition, have already included (1) 24-hour ankle-bracelet monitoring, curfews and other police-state measures imposed on released detainees, (2) a new “preventative detention” regime to re-imprison detainees, and (3) the reopening of the notorious “offshore” detention camp on the tiny impoverished Pacific island of Nauru.

This has been accompanied by the demonising of non-citizens, such as falsely accusing immigration detainees, including refugees, of being murders and rapists, when even those with past convictions have long ago served their prison sentences.

The Australian government, led by the leaders of Labor’s so-called “Left” faction, is matching the most far-right and fascistic elements globally, including Donald Trump, the Conservative government in Britain, the Meloni administration in Italy and the AfD (Alternative for Germany) in witch-hunting and seeking to deport asylum seekers and other “non-citizens.”

Internationally, amid the Gaza genocide and the plunge into wider war in the Middle East, and against Russia and China, there is a drive to divide working people, domestically and globally, and subordinate them to the geo-strategic interests of the major capitalist powers. Refugees and other “foreign” workers are being blamed for the deteriorating social conditions being produced by capitalism’s economic and cost-of-living crisis and the diversion of billions of dollars into military spending.

Three decades ago, the Keating Labor government launched the outright assault on refugees in 1992, when it established the worldwide precedent of mandatory detention of all people arriving by boat. Through this latest bill, the Albanese government is going further in stripping refugees, immigrants and other non-citizens of basic democratic and legal rights.

“Something will have to give”—IMF warns of build-up of US debt

Nick Beams

The opening chapter of the World Economic Outlook report of the International Monetary Fund, released at its spring meeting in Washington yesterday, presented a generally upbeat report on the state of the global economy, at least on the surface. But not far below it there are gathering storms.

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, Chief Economist of the IMF, holds up a tablet with the World Economic Outlook report. [AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin]

In his foreword to the report, IMF economic counsellor Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas wrote: “The global economy remains remarkably resilient, with growth holding steady as inflation returns to target.’

Despite “gloomy predictions,” the world had avoided a recession and the banking system proved “largely resilient.” He was also gratified that despite the surge of inflation and the cost-of-living crisis there had been no “wage-price spirals.”

In other words, because of the actions of the trade unions in all the major economies in suppressing wage demands and imposing sub-inflationary agreements, workers had been made to bear the cost of the inflationary spiral set off by the COVID pandemic and the boost to energy prices flowing from the Ukraine war.

In contrast to the generally upbeat outlook on the immediate situation, examination of the IMF’s own data and projections for the medium-term told a different story with growth over the next five years unlikely to return to anywhere near previous historical norms.

And even the immediate projections for the major economies show a significant slowing of economic output. Within the G7, the US economy leads the way with growth for this year expected to be 2.7 percent, an upgrade of 0.6 percentage points on the previous estimate.

But it is all downhill from there. The next best performer is Canada with expected growth of 1.2 percent. The German economy, by some measures now the third largest economy in the world after the US and China, is expected to grow by only 0.2 percent, the lowest in the G7.

Japan, now relegated to the world’s fourth largest economy, will grow by 0.9 percent with the UK coming in at 0.5 percent, after experiencing no growth in 2023.

On the growth of the US economy, which was described as “exceptional,” Gourinchas sounded a warning about the increase in government spending. It had led to a “fiscal stance that is out of line with long-term fiscal sustainability.”

This is a reference to the rise of US public debt, now equivalent in size to US GDP which is expected to accelerate in coming years and is characterised by the Treasury department itself as “unsustainable.”

“This raises short-term risks to the disinflation process, as well as longer-term fiscal and financial stability risks for the global economy since it risks pushing up global funding costs. Something will have to give,” Gourinchas wrote.

While he did not specify it, the key driving force of this expansion is the escalation of military spending as well as large handouts to major corporations under the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act and other measures.

The IMF also expressed concern about the Chinese economy which has been a mainstay of global growth since the global financial crisis of 2008. It continues to be heavily impacted by the property crisis and the IMF has called for strong measures to provide an increase in domestic demand to lift growth.

But there is little sign of that. The Chinese government is seeking to boost manufacturing, especially in high tech areas such as green energy and electric vehicles, which it can turnout at lower cost than in the West, leading to a risk this will “further exacerbate trade tension in an already fraught geopolitical environment.”

These conflicts were on display during the IMF gathering. US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has been organising meetings with her counterparts with the aim, among other things, of developing a unified response against the outflow of high-tech exports from China that cut into the US and other markets.

This was a central topic of her discussions with Chinese officials and government representatives during her visit earlier this month in which virtually no agreement was reached.

In comments at the weekend on the eve of the IMF meeting, she made clear what was at stake.

“This is a complicated issue that involves their entire macroeconomic and industrial strategy. “It’s not going to be solved in an afternoon or a month,” she said.

These remarks underscore the existential nature of the conflict. The US is demanding the total subordination of China to its demands that it completely scrap its focus on what president Xi Jinping calls the development of “new productive forces” because this is seen as one of the chief threats to its continued domination of the global economy.

From the Chinese side this strategy is seen as the only way to sustain economic growth, even at the much lower target of 5 percent, to maintain “social stability” that is, to try to prevent the eruption of struggles by the Chinese working class which would threaten the regime of the ruling capitalist oligarchy represented by the Communist party.

This conflict can only intensify under conditions where, as the IMF made clear in Chapter 3 of its report published last week, global growth is markedly slowing.

In a blog on the chapter, two of its authors warned that in the coming period growth is “set to fall far below its historical average.”

“The world economy,” they wrote, “faces a sobering reality. The global growth rate—stripped of its cyclical ups and downs—has slowed steadily since the 2008–09 global financial crisis.”

It said economic growth was expected to reach just 2.8 percent by 2030, well below the historical average of 3.8 percent.

The prospect of weaker growth was “exacerbated by strong headwinds from geo-economic fragmentation, and harmful unilateral trade and industrial policies.”

They noted that half of the growth decline was the result of a fall in total factor productivity (TFP), which measures the input of capital and labour and how these resources are used.

In recent years increasingly “insufficient distribution of resources across firms has dragged down TFP and, with it, global growth.”

It was not referred to, but one of the key factors in this process is that corporations have used their profits and even run up debts not for productive investments but to finance share buy backs to meet the demands of hedge funds and other parasitic financial institutions for a boost in “shareholder value.”

Overall, the IMF gathering was not so a meeting to deal with growing global economic problems but was more akin to a war council in which the immediate target is China on the one hand, and the working class on other.

There was an insistence on the need to continue the fight against inflation, the code phrase for driving down real wages, the need to increase productivity, the intensification of exploitation, and the maintenance of financial buffers—that is, cuts in social spending—to deal with mounting debts.

Insofar as the resolution of economic problems was addressed, the IMF said “multilateral cooperation” would be needed.

But that has gone by the board. Its passing was highlighted in remarks this week by the Australian Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese in which he announced government support for war-related industries.

Starting with the US, he listed a series of nationalist measures introduced by a range of countries to boost their economic and national security.

This “strategic competition,” which is directed towards war, he said, was now a “fact of life.”

Canadian imperialism outlines its plans for global war

Keith Jones

Canada’s Liberal government presented a “defence policy update” last week that pledges tens of billions of dollars in increased military spending and outlines plans to procure a vast array of new weapons to ensure that the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) has the means to wage war around the world.

Canadian Armed Forces "Operation Unifier" mission to train Ukrainian military personnel. Since its launch in 2015, the CAF claims to have trained some 40,000 Ukrainian troops, including some of those integrated from far-right militia groups. [Photo: Canadian Armed Forces]

Titled “Our North, Strong and Free: a Renewed Vision for Canada’s Defence,” the update is notable for the breadth of ruling class interests, ambitions, and strategic commitments it outlines. Invoking Canada’s “diverse population, extensive global presence, and commercial ties,” it asserts that Canada must have the military capabilities—working in conjunction with the US, and its other NATO and Five-Eyes imperialist allies—to wage war on every continent and ocean so as to uphold “global stability” and a western-imposed “international order.”  Space and cyber-space are similarly identified as key arenas of military conflict for which Canada must prepare.

Like the 2017 defence policy statement that it builds upon, the update is not a national strategy assessment. But it does spell out a predatory, military-strategic vision. “Instability at home and abroad” are “increasing quickly” it asserts. If Canadian imperialism is to secure its global position, it must be at the centre of the growing global conflict that pits the United States, “our closest ally,” against Russia and China.

Canada, the update affirms, is at the core of NATO’s “western” and “northern flanks” in the US-NATO instigated war with Russia. Moreover, as “an Atlantic and Pacific nation that shares a continent with the United States, Canada lies at the geographic middle” of the “strategic competition... centred in the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions” that “will define” the world’s “future.”

As the update observes, Canada is already deeply involved in the Ukraine war; the US-led military-strategic offensive against China, including provocative “freedom of navigation operations” in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait; and in Washington’s wars and intrigues in the Middle East. Like Washington, Ottawa has provided Israel with arms and political support as it massacres the Palestinians in Gaza and pursues aggression across the Middle East. In addition to Russia and China, the update specifically names Iran and North Korea as strategic threats to Canada.

Although the update does not say so in so many words, it makes clear that Canada is already at war and must rapidly accelerate and expand its preparations to wage war. It reiterates Ottawa’s oft-repeated vow to militarily support Ukraine for as long as it takes, claiming “the stakes could not be higher.” It also highlights Canada’s role in leading the NATO “forward” forces in Latvia, where the current CAF deployment is to be more than doubled to 2,300 by 2026, and the importance of greatly enhancing the military’s capacity to strike Russia from the Canadian far north.

It also refers on multiple occasions to the need for the CAF to apply the “lessons learned” from the Ukraine war. Drawing those lessons is among the specific goals of the recently concluded 10-year Canada-Ukraine military-security pact.

Citing the Ukraine war as well as the shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic’s disruption of supply chains, the update emphasizes the need to develop new technologies, including military applications for AI, and Canada’s military-industrial capacity. The war “has confirmed the need for large forces and combat power, well-supplied by standing inventories of ammunition and spare parts, backed by a strong industrial base to re-arm over time.” Two immediate goals set out in the update and directly tied to waging the Ukraine war are expanding Canada’s production of munitions and establishing a “greater strategic reserve of battle-decisive munitions.”

As suggested by its title, a major focus of the defence policy update is the need to dramatically expand Canada’s military capacities in the far north, so as to counter both Russia and China. It notes that due to climate change, by 2050 the “Northwest Passage” (a sea-channel that Canada considers its internal waters but whose sovereignty is contested by the US) could be the shortest route from East Asia to Europe.

Expanding Canada’s military prowess and reach in the Arctic is part of an ongoing commitment from Ottawa to “modernize” NORAD, the Canada-US joint aerospace and maritime defence command, for great-power “strategic competition” in the 21st Century.

Established in 1958 at the height of the Cold War, NORAD, as the update boasts, is the world’s only joint military command. Last year the Trudeau government committed to spending C$38 billion over the next 20 year on NORAD modernization. The update outlines further steps to bolster Canadian and NORAD capabilities in the far north. These include setting up a network of “northern operational support hubs;” building a satellite ground station in the Arctic; procuring airborne early warning aircraft; and deploying new specialized maritime sensors on Arctic and other off-shore vessels.

“Our North” emphasizes that the importance of NORAD to the Canada-US economic and military-strategic partnership that since 1940 has been the cornerstone of Canadian imperialism’s global strategy. With US global hegemony under threat and Washington responding with protectionist and unilateralist policies that frequently roil its allies, the Canadian ruling class is all the more anxious to maintain the closest ties with Washington and Wall Street. Its strategists frequently argue that Canada must advocate in tandem for a “North America First” and “Fortress North America” strategy. While Ottawa publicly eschews such language, hoping to uphold NATO and other multilateral institutions and frameworks, its default posture is to cleave to the US.

In this vein, the defence update stresses that strong North American defences are pivotal to the ability of both North American imperialist powers to exert power and wage war around the world. “A secure North America,” it asserts, “creates strategic dilemmas for adversaries, and enables Canada to reinforce allies in crisis or conflict.”

The policy update announced an additional $8 billion in military spending over the next five years and more than $72 billion over the next 20 years. This is on top of the enormous sums the Trudeau government already allocated under the 2017 defence policy framework, which announced plans to hike Canada’s military spending by 70 percent by 2026.

Since then, the trade union and New Democratic Party-backed Liberal government has embarked on a massive armament drive, headlined by new fleets of 15 warships, 88 F-35 fighter jets, and attack drones.

The new spending will push Canada’s defence budget from the current $30 billion or so per year to $49.5 billion by 2029-30. This represents a hike from 1.33 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 1.76 percent. If defence-related spending from other departments were included, a government official told the Toronto Star, Canada’s overall expenditures would be “in the zone of $57.8 billion” in 2029-30.

Among the major new initiatives announced in the update are:

• The purchase of a new fleet of attack helicopters at a cost of more than $18 billion
•  Establishing a worldwide military satellite communications system, $5.5 billion
• Obtaining long-range missile capability, $2.6 billion
• The creation of a joint CAF cyber command with the Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian component of the Five Eyes global spy network to carry out offensive and defensive cyber-war operations globally, $2.8 billion

“Our North” also announces that the CAF will explore the adoption of a vast array of additional weapons systems, including more advanced replacement submarines, tanks, and armoured all-terrain vehicles.

Welcoming the policy update, US Ambassador to Canada David Cohen said it was “a substantial down payment toward Canada’s pledge to meet its NATO commitment to spend at least two per cent of its GDP on defence.”  While praising Canada’s role in arming and training the military forces of the far-right Zelensky-led Ukrainian regime, Washington has been pressing the Trudeau government to hike military spending faster.

Significantly, at the press conference where the defence policy update was released, Prime Minster Trudeau suggested that Canada will consider the purchase of nuclear-powered submarines and said it is in discussions to join the anti-China AUKUS (Australia, UK, US) military alliance.

One further element of “Our North” merits brief comment. In keeping with the government’s political posture, it tries to give Canadian imperialism’s plans for global war an identity politics gloss. It pledges the CAF will integrate “gender perspectives in military operations and institutions” and will give the Inuit and other aboriginal peoples in the far north a major role in the militarization of their traditional lands.

The Liberal government’s defence policy update must serve as a warning and call to action for the working class. In recent months, all the major imperialist powers, including the US, Japan, France, Germany and the UK, have announced record military budgets and multi-year programs to dramatically increase their arsenals of mass destruction. Canadian imperialism is following suit.

Indeed, the corporate media and Conservative opposition’s response to the announcement that tens of billions more are to be diverted to making war was that this is woefully insufficient. Far too much of the money is budgeted for the next decade and the military’s ranks need to be rapidly expanded, they clamoured. The Globe and Mail, the traditional voice of the Bay Street financial elite, said the government had done “a passable job in articulating the mounting security threats facing Canada,” but chastised it for not immediately moving to NATO’s 2 percent GDP bench level. “Plans to come up with a plan, the exploration of options: they all add up to delay, not action.”

The Conservatives led by the far-right populist Pierre Poilievre were even more scathing, accusing the government of failing to address “years of neglect.” The NDP echoed the Conservatives, only adding that they too were responsible for the governmental “neglect” of the military. At the urging of the trade unions, the NDP responded to the outbreak of the NATO-instigated Ukraine war by entering into a formal government alliance with Trudeau so as to ensure the Canadian ruling class had “political stability” in waging war abroad and imposing “post-pandemic” austerity and inflation-driven real wage cuts on the working class.

Behind the backs of the population, Canada’s political and military-security establishment, like that of its allies, is embroiling the Canadian population in a global conflict that has already resulted in war with Russia, Israel’s imperialist-backed genocide in Gaza, and an escalating campaign of US provocation and threats that threaten to explode into war in the Asia Pacific.

Tesla announces more than 14,000 layoffs as global attacks on jobs mount

Tom Hall

Tesla and SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk. [AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino]

Electric vehicle company Tesla is cutting 10 percent of its global workforce, CEO and world’s third-richest human Elon Musk announced Sunday night. The company has a global workforce of 140,000 people, meaning at least 14,000 people will lose their jobs.

“As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity,” Musk said in a letter to employees. “There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done” to ensure the company be “lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle.”

There is staggering hypocrisy in this billionaire ignoramus, who made his fortune through speculation on the stock market and in cryptocurrency, telling workers their jobs must be sacrificed in the name of “efficiency.” Musk and other ultra-wealthy individuals, who have seen their wealth soar since the start of the pandemic, are by far the largest waste of social resources on the planet.

The $187 billion hoard which Musk personally controls is more than the gross domestic product of the country of Kuwait and nearly twice the annual K-12 schools budget of California. Musk runs his businesses Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter/X as personal fiefs, with the latter also serving as a sounding board for his extreme-right politics. Massive purges at Musk’s companies are a semi-regular event. Tesla cut 10 percent of its white-collar workforce in 2022 and thousands of Twitter workers lost their jobs that same year almost immediately after Musk purchased the social media platform.

Many layoffs at Tesla began immediately Monday morning. Business Insider reports that plant workers in Nevada waited in line for two hours to clock in while management weeded out laid-off workers from the crowd. Others were told that if their badges didn’t work that meant they no longer had a job.

Tesla itself, as far as Musk and its stockholders are concerned, is less of a car company than a speculative venture. The company has more than $510 billion in market capitalization on the stock market, more than any other auto firm, despite controlling less than 2 percent of global auto sales. However, the company’s sales declined for the first time since 2020 last year, to 1.8 million, and its massively overvalued market cap is down by around half since a high of more than $1 trillion.

Worldwide attack on jobs

But the layoffs are not simply the product of greed and stupidity of Musk and Tesla’s stockholders. They are part of a broader attack on jobs in industries across the world, spearheaded by the Biden White House, the US Federal Reserve and their counterparts in other countries. The aim is to weaponize high interest rates, sellout contracts rammed through by corrupt union bureaucracies and new labor-saving technologies to smash the growing resistance of the working class through mass unemployment.

The purpose of this is not only to protect corporate profits, but to free up resources for wars, including the spiraling conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and well-advanced plans for a war against China. Washington sees the global electric vehicle market in particular as a key battleground against China, which currently leads its western competitors. Earlier this year, Chinese car company BYD overtook Tesla as the world’s largest EV manufacturer. Without Tesla, by far the largest American EV manufacturer, the US would be even further behind.

This same technology could and should be used to ease the burden of work, improve wages and rebuild the decaying social infrastructure. Instead, under the capitalist profit system, developments in science are being used to ramp up exploitation and inequality, demonstrating the totally irrational and obsolete character of this form of economy.

A report earlier this month by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that US businesses announced more layoffs in March than any other month since the start of 2023. More than 90,000 job cuts were announced in March, bringing the total for the first quarter of the year to 257,254. That is more than twice the number of jobs cut in the fourth quarter of 2023.

The largest cuts were in the technology sector, which continues to lead the way in the jobs bloodbath as companies purge relatively better-paid tech workers as they move towards the utilization of artificial intelligence. Transportation and manufacturing were fourth and fifth place, with 15,746 and 9,214 cuts, respectively, up 483 percent and 726 percent over the same time last year.

Meanwhile, business news outlets are crowing that the “Great Resignation is Over,” a reference to the tightening labor market and modest wage increases since 2021 which have emboldened workers to push for strike action.

The role of EV and AI in auto

The auto industry is a major center of the job cuts. Hundreds of thousands of global auto jobs are on the chopping block over the next several years as the industry moves rapidly towards electric vehicles, which requires less labor to produce, and to implement new automated technologies. The auto industry in the United States has already slashed thousands of jobs this year, including 200 supplemental workers at Stellantis in Detroit last week.

A recent front-page article in the Detroit News dealt in-depth with the implications of new automation technology which is also being introduced to the industry. “In 2022, the global automotive industry installed 135,000 new industrial robots, according to the International Federation of Robotics,” the paper said. “The only industry to surpass that installation rate was electronics.”

The article highlighted new automation being introduced by General Motors at its Fort Wayne Assembly plant, which resulted in 30 job cuts, as well as automation at parts warehouses. “That, however, is likely just a glimpse for what it is to come, say executives and other experts in the industry,” the News added. It cited a new factory in Singapore by Korean automaker Hyundai, where “about 50 percent of all tasks are completed by 200 robots with human collaboration.”

The role of the union bureaucracy

While Tesla in the United States is nonunion, the United Auto Workers has played a central role in helping the auto industry carry out mass job cuts, which have all taken place after a toothless “standup strike” last fall and a new contract with no provisions against cuts.

According to the Detroit News article, the only provisions on automation in the new contract are that it “must notify the local union about the introduction of ‘new or advanced technology’ to allow ‘meaningful discussion of its impact.’ If unresolved issues ensue, the contract does outline a grievance procedure.”

While the UAW has kept a guilty silence on the massive job losses, which it is in fact helping to carry out, UAW President Fain’s star is rising. He is making regular appearances with Joe Biden, including at last month’s State of the Union speech and at an official reception at the White House last week for the Japanese prime minister. This shows that the ruling elite sees the services of the union bureaucracy in reining in the working class as of key political importance.

This function is being performed by the union bureaucracy in every industry. UPS has announced more than 12,000 job cuts since the Teamsters union pushed through a sellout contract in similar fashion last year. The company recently outlined plans to close more than 200 facilities and “automate everything,” in the words of CEO Carol Tomé. Meanwhile, the Teamsters have hosted both Biden and Donald Trump at its headquarters this year as part of a series of “candidate roundtables.”

Dengue fever epidemic sweeps through Latin America

Benjamin Mateus

The unprecedented wave of dengue fever continues to sweep across Latin America and the Caribbean with nearly five million people infected thus far in 2024, nearly two-thirds of them in Brazil, which is the epicenter of the epidemic.

Next worst affected among other countries in the hemisphere, Argentina has recorded over 233,000 cases in its summer, a figure eight times higher than last year. Other countries reporting high figures include Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru. In late March, even Puerto Rico declared a public health emergency as cases surpassed the highs seen in the entire previous year. 

Brazil has thus far registered a record 3.14 million cases with health experts soberly noting that the tally could top 4.2 million, a figure approximating the total number of dengue cases in all the Americas in the full year 2023. The country’s health ministry, on its dengue dashboard, indicated 1,344 people have already died and another 1,872 deaths are under investigation. By comparison, 1,094 deaths were attributed to dengue in 2023. 

Weekly dengue cases in Brazil, 2023 and 2024 [Photo: Brazil Health Ministry]

There are four serotypes of dengue viruses (DENV 1-4) that cause the mosquito-borne illness known as dengue (breakbone) fever that is currently circulating in the Americas this year. 

Approximately half the world’s population (across 129 countries) live in areas—tropical and subtropical—at risk for dengue. Health experts estimate that up to 400 million people get infected with dengue each year. Upwards of 100 million have symptomatic infections and 40,000 die from complications caused by severe infections, which include hemorrhagic shock. 

In the South and Southeast Asia regions, Bangladesh and Thailand, among others, reported similar surges in dengue cases. By November 2023, health authorities reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) that cases for the year had topped nearly 310,000 compared to just 62,400 in 2022. Thailand saw a three-fold rise over the preceding year with 136,655 dengue infections in 2023. As the WHO noted, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand rank among the world’s 30 most affected countries for endemic dengue fever. 

Global map of dengue fever outbreaks [Photo: WHO and CDC]

Among the WHO Western Pacific Region, Vietnam (150,000 cases and 36 deaths) and the Philippines (167,000 infections and 575 deaths) were hardest hit by the disease. Australia, Cambodia, China, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia and Singapore are other countries reporting impacts of dengue. As the report notes, “Member states with endemic transmission continue to report longer seasonal dengue epidemics with increasing magnitude and geographic spread. However, disease incidence is less reliable due to underreporting of cases, particularly in the Pacific Island Countries and territories …”

Winter tends to prevent year-round infections with mosquito-borne diseases. However, the rise in global temperatures has made the temperate climates more susceptible for dengue virus transmission, as higher rates of precipitation from torrential rain falls lead to floods and stagnant water pools, conditions favorable for these mosquitos. 

As the December 21, 2023, WHO report on the dengue global situation remarked, “The global incidence of dengue has markedly increased over the past two decades, posing a substantial public health challenge. From 2000 to 2019, the WHO documented a ten-fold surge in reported cases worldwide, increasing from 500,000 to 5.2 million. The year 2019 marked an unprecedented peak, with reported instances across 129 countries.”

After a slight dip during the onset of the COVID pandemic, dengue fever began to spread even more widely in 2023, and the outbreak in 2024 in the Americas eclipses any previous epidemics. 

In their assessment of the unprecedented development, the WHO highlighted various factors that include climate change-induced shifts in weather patterns, the mosquitos’ distribution and adaptation, unplanned urbanization and human activities, fragile health systems amid political and financial instability, co-circulation of multiple strains of the dengue viruses, lack of specific treatments, and “prolonged ongoing concurrent outbreaks, including COVID-19.”

The disease is not contagious. Mosquitos harboring the viruses transmit the pathogen to humans. Symptoms typically begin from a few days to two weeks. These include high fevers, severe headaches, vomiting, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic rash and itching. These usually last up to seven days and treatment is supportive. In rare cases, the disease can progress to a condition known as dengue hemorrhagic shock, with mortality rates of 10 to 25 percent, even with intensive medical support. 

There are currently two vaccines available to protect against dengue infection. Dengavaxia, a live attenuated virus-based vaccine suitable against all four serotypes of dengue manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur, became available in 2015. The vaccine is given as three doses at six-month intervals. It is approved for use in individuals aged six through 45 with a previously laboratory-confirmed previous dengue infection and who live in endemic areas. Due to an antibody-dependent enhancement, the vaccine can make future dengue infections more severe in dengue-naïve recipients. 

A second dengue vaccine, Qdenga, manufactured by Takeda Pharmaceuticals Vaccine which completed clinical trials in 2022, has been recommended by the WHO for the prevention of dengue in people four years of age or older without a previous dengue infection. It too is a live attenuated vaccine against all four serotypes of the dengue virus given as two doses three months apart.

However, limited supplies and costs of the vaccine have made it prohibitive. In Europe, the vaccine can be purchased at $115 per dose. It is $40 in Indonesia. In January, according to the New York Times report, Brazil purchased the entire global stock of Qdenga, paying $19 per dose for the bulk purchase. Still, that only leaves enough vaccine to treat 3.3 million of Brazil’s 220 million people. Children aged six to 16 are being prioritized. 

The rising prevalence of dengue and its spread towards the poles is exemplary and indicative of the massive redistribution of global biodiversity caused by climate change. 2023 was the warmest year since global records were started in 1850 and is 1.35 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial averages from 1850 to 1900. The continued global processes that are accelerating can only aggravate these processes for human populations.

According to a report published in February 2023 by the Royal Society, “One foundational meta-analysis estimated that, to date, terrestrial species have been moving uphill at a pace of 1.1 meter per year, and to higher latitudes at a pace of 1.7 kilometer per year. Among the millions of species on the move are some of the most consequential pathogens, disease vectors and wildlife reservoirs that affect human health and economic development.”

They continued, “In recent years, mosquito-borne diseases like malaria, dengue and Zika virus have also expanded to new latitudes and elevations, and will continue to do so in the future, following the thermal limits on transmission set by their ectothermic vectors. Some of this expansion has been facilitated by parallel global invasions of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, which have spread an estimated 250 and 150 kilometers per year, respectively.”

In another 2022 scientific report published in Nature, the authors attempted to quantify the full extent of climate change on human pathogenic diseases. In their exhaustive work, they wrote, “The compilation of pathogenic diseases aggravated by climactic hazards represent 58 percent of all infectious diseases reported to have impacted humanity worldwide, that is, out of an authoritative list of 375 infectious diseases documented to have impacted humanity, 218 were found to be aggravated by climactic hazards.” 

In their summary, they warn, “The human pathogenic disease and transmission pathways aggravated by climatic hazards are too numerous for comprehensive societal adaptations, highlighting the urgent need to work at the source of the problem: reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

However, greenhouse gas emissions and the ongoing climate change are a byproduct of the anarchy of capitalist production that places the immediate accumulation of profits above the broader issues that are making life inhospitable on the planet. It exacerbates the already criminal levels of inequality that have seen the accumulation of obscene wealth on one end and the impoverishments of billions of people on the other. Abject poverty, inadequate housing and nutrition, lack of access to quality health services, aggravate the dangers posed by these diseases that are growing in incidence and virulence.