Public Health for Profits: Malaysian healthcare at the crossroads

The Madani state’s reform agenda has since its rise to power in 2022 turned out to include not only intensifying the exploitation of public health workers via its brutal imposition of one austerity policy after another, but also its continued push for privatization. The lesson could not be any clearer: once the profit motive enters the equation, healthcare ceases to prioritize human need. If the mantle is not taken up by the working class to organize collectively and resist these neoliberal policies, the complete collapse of our public healthcare system becomes not a question of if, but when.

The Reformist Doctor Who Treats the Symptom, Not the Cause

Because PSM does not recognize, as we do, the material fact that the state is nothing more than an instrument of the ruling class—that is, a tool for domination of one class over another—thus it is at best reluctant, and at worst unwilling, to challenge the capitalist state at its core. Instead, its strategy revolves around operating within the constraints of the existing system, lobbying for reforms and seeking the support of progressive liberal allies along the way, promising to curb the excesses of capitalism.

Solidarity with Nurses and Healthcare Workers Against 45-Hour Work Week!

The government can never, and will never, treat our nurses and doctors fairly, so long as it remains pro-capitalist, not pro-worker. This was the case in the BN-UMNO era, and so is it now with this “progressive” Madani state. So long as the capitalist economic system of general labor exploitation remains unchallenged, and so long as capitalist politics remains the order of the day, all public services, healthcare included, can never truly serve the public — laborers and consumers alike.