Cuba’s infant mortality rate in 2002 was 6.5, and preliminary data from Cuba’s National Statistics Department put the figure at 5.8 for 2004, well below the U.S. national average.

What is behind the relatively high infant mortality in the United States compared to imperialist nations and revolutionary Cuba is the ruling-class offensive over the past decade against the social wage and living and working conditions of working people. Under the two-term Clinton administration from 1992 to 2000, health-care costs continued to increase. The 1996 “welfare reform” bill effectively ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children and imposed a five-year cutoff for those receiving welfare benefits. These cuts fell particularly hard on working women and their children.

More than 45 million Americans had no health-care coverage in 2004, and the cost of medical plans grew by 11.2 percent, five times faster than increases in worker’s wages. A study by the Institute of Medicine last year reported, “The lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year,” making it the sixth leading killer in the country. Health-care premiums also increased, taking an increasingly large bite out of workers’ pay checks. The Bush administration’s proposal to put in place individual, tax-free “health savings accounts” to supplement inadequate and costly company-provided benefits packages signaled another step in the offensive by both parties of capitalism against Social Security, Medicare, and other social entitlements.

The national figure for infant mortality does not take into account the disparities based on race and geography. For oppressed nationalities, infant mortality rates are higher than the national average of 7 deaths per 1,000 live births. For Blacks, the infant mortality rate in 2000 was nearly double the national average at 13.6; for Puerto Ricans it reached 7.8, and for Native Americans 8.2. That year the District of Columbia had a rate of infant deaths at 12.0, and Mississippi had the highest rate of any state with 10.7, the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics reports.

The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control (CDC) blamed these disparities—particularly the high rate of infant mortality among oppressed nationalities—on “behaviors, lifestyles, and conditions that affect birth outcomes, such as smoking, substance abuse, poor nutrition, lack of prenatal care.” Although government agencies seek to place the burden of the rising infant deaths on the “bad habits” of working people, the real source for the differences in infant mortality rates lies in the decreasing access to adequate medical facilities, the rising cost of medical care, and the government cutbacks in social programs, including those that provide prenatal care to working-class women.

Last year, the state of Colorado cut off Medicaid funding for prenatal care for undocumented workers. State authorities reversed the policy of “presumptive eligibility” for pregnant women who applied for benefits. Applicants for Medicaid-funded prenatal care now must first be ruled eligible before receiving benefits, a process that could delay seeing a physician for weeks. In the name of “balancing the budget,” similar government-funded programs have been placed on the chopping block. In Arizona, a referendum was passed November 2 that cuts off all public services to undocumented workers, and made it a misdemeanor for government employees to fail to report any presumed violation of immigration law by those who apply for services. Although these state governments claim their aim is to limit programs for so-called illegal immigrants, the direct targets are the living conditions and social wage of the working class as a whole.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home