Anthrax Terror Spotlights 30-Year Takedown of U.S. Public Health System

This article was reprinted from the October 29, 2001 edition of New Federalist newspaper. For more information, please call 703-297-8368.

As the extent of the anthrax terrorism grows (Congress, media, U.S. postal system, White House mail machinery, New York government offices), and instances of exposure, infection, and death increase, the spotlight is on the fact that U.S. public health and medical facilities are swamped. Any routine occurrence—seasonal flu epidemic, large-scale accident—could bring down the system. This end result, not necessarily mass kill, is one of the top objectives of bioterrorism, as was stressed by the famous Soviet program Biopreparat.

The critical factor about the anthrax crisis, beyond its evil cunning, is the reality that the U.S. public health system is so badly atrophied, it "doesn't take much" to overload it. Right now in Washington, D.C., labs can't handle the testing, hospitals are strained, and so forth.

On October 23, 2001, Lyndon LaRouche commented, "I would be worried by the technical possibility of a return of the 'Spanish flu' epidemic, or some other horrors; but in any case, panic is the worst danger of all.

"Instead of panicking, we must act to force through a rapid rebuilding of those health-care and related national defenses which have been torn down since the Nixon Administration's ramming through the overturn of the Hill-Burton law with HMO legislation."

Since that 1973 Federal law authorizing HMOs, all the critical U.S. public-health ratios have declined: manpower, diagnostics, labs, hospital beds, vaccine stockpiles, to the point of clear and present danger. This was the direct result of the switchover from public infrastructure standards, to health-care de-regulation, in which so-called "market"-driven decision-making provided spectacular profits to "managed-care" companies, pharmaceutical houses, and the like.

The public and lawmakers stood by and let it happen. But now, you are seeing a few policy reaction surprises. On the surface level, the infamous deregulators in office, are caught out. On a deeper level, there is potential for citizen action to force a return to government policies in the public good.

Oct. 23, the first day of hearings when Congress reconvened (in makeshift quarters) after a recess to sanitize Capitol Hill buildings, Tommy Thompson, Health and Human Services Secretary, assured Congress that some $700 million would be poured into building up public health services. As Governor of Wisconsin, Thompson had been famous for cutting health and welfare services!

Oct. 22, Homeland Defense Director Tom Ridge told an anxious Washington press conference that he will spend $2 billion on anti-terrorism public health. As Governor of Pennsylvania, Ridge's sweeping cuts in state medical care led directly to increased deaths!

The case of the reopening of D.C. General Hospital makes the point. Last summer, the 195-year-old top-flight hospital was shut down (except for a few clinics), over the objections of the City Council, the population, and the medical community, led by Lyndon LaRouche's 2004 Presidential campaign. The reason given was "fiscal"—a decision by a Congressionally imposed Financial Control Board.

But all of a sudden, October 21, 2001, D.C. General is back on the TV screens! D.C. General was partly reopened last weekend: Some 10,000 postal workers are being screened and treated for anthrax exposure. The need for a full-service hospital has been made dramatically clear. Even so, the world-class D.C. General micro-biology laboratory, and other vital divisions remain closed.

"You are all to come to D.C. General.... We will have medicine for all of you," said Dr. Ivan Walks at the Ridge press conference Oct. 22, speaking to postal workers. Walks, head of the D.C. Public Health Department, had five months earlier wholeheartedly supported shutting the hospital down. D.C. Mayor Tony Williams and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton stood silently by at the Ridge press conference; they had enforced shutting D.C. General.

As of Oct. 22, two D.C. postal workers were dead, and two others in serious condition, of pulmonary ("inhalation") anthrax. Health workers are now checking 36 post offices in the District. Nationally, 14 are known stricken with anthrax (seven with pulmonary infection), three are dead, and over 30 are confirmed to have been exposed.

Over the past 30 years, some 1,000 U.S. hospitals have been closed down; more have had their bed-count reduced, dropping the national ratio of beds per 1,000 persons from about 5 in the 1970s, down to under 3, and in many counties, 1 or none. The famous 1946 Hospital Construction Act ("Hill-Burton") had mandated a ratio of between 4.5 and 5 beds per 1,000, but this was scrapped in the 1970s.

In addition, all the other parts of our national public health "soft" infrastructure, have been undermined.

Workforce:
The ratio of U.S. public health workers to population dropped drastically from the 1970s to the 1990s. In the early 1970s, there was one public health worker employed (state, county, Federal combined—from nursing, to clerks, to epidemiologists, etc.) for every 457 persons; in 1999, this had fallen to one worker per 635.

Moreover, many public health jobs now involve home care and primary care, not necessarily "front-line" disease-related functions, which have been scaled back severely.

There is also a wide disparity in the ratios of public health staff per population, depending on the part of the country. The graphic shows this variation in the 10 U.S. health districts (set by the Department of Health and Human Services). As of 1999, the national ratio was 158 workers per 100,000 population. Many states are way below this ratio: Take the North Central region (Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin), with 76 workers per 100,000! For the four-state Midwest (Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri), it's 77 per 100,000! The highest ratio is in the Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska), with 200 per 100,000. (These statistics are from the Public Health Workforce, Enumeration 2000.)

Now Secretary Ridge has called for 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine to be produced, as a precaution against bioterrorism. The government stockpile is under 15 million doses, and their condition uncertain. It will take through summer, at best, to produce another 54 million doses. How to produce the remainder is now under negotiation. The Gilmore Commission—the anti-terror preparedness group set up a few years ago—is expected to call this week for the Federal government to run a vaccine factory.

To protect the National Security, a medical emergency must be declared, and dealt with from the standpoint of the GENERAL WELFARE. That means the opening up of public hospitals, and the expansion of health and nursing facilities, and above all, provision of the medication, testing , and treatment required by the POOR, regardless of their ability to pay.