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Nearly half of US adults ages 19 to 64—an estimated 84 million people—did not have health insurance for all of 2012, or had coverage that did not adequately protect them from high health care costs.

A new report from the New York-based Commonwealth Fund documents the fact that growing numbers of workers and their family members are foregoing care because they cannot afford it, or are struggling under the weight of mounting medical bills.

This health care crisis will not be remedied by the full implementation of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act in January 2014. Many of the currently uninsured or underinsured will be shunted into inferior plans with large out-of-pocket costs, or will simply not be able to afford coverage offered by private health insurers on the so-called exchanges. Many low- and middle-income households will continue to lack adequate insurance and be forced to skip care or medications due to cost.

Collier campaigning in Detroit

The mayoral campaign of D’Artagnan Collier continued this weekend, as petitioners collected signatures at various locations around Detroit to place Collier on the mayoral ballot. Campaigners have presently collected almost 800 signatures. This is well over the 500 required for ballot access, but the campaign has pledged to collect 1,000.

Collier and a campaign team petitioned at Eastern Market, which is Michigan’s largest open-air marketplace, where tens of thousands of people buy fresh produce and flowers and enjoy outdoor music each Saturday.

Collier and campaigners emphasized that the issues facing Detroit were not unique to the city; rather, the attack on Detroit is a part of a global process. The appointment of an emergency manager in Detroit was seen by the ruling class as a model for similar efforts across the country and around the world.

More than 300 people are dead, mainly garment workers, and many more are injured following the collapse of the eight-storey Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh this week. The tragedy is one of the world’s worst industrial disasters, but it will not be the last, as global corporations constantly drive for greater profits through the exploitation of sweatshop labour.

The Rana Plaza complex was typical of the multi-level buildings that have been thrown up by the massive expansion of Bangladesh’s clothing industry—now second only to China—with scant regard for the country’s limited safety and building codes. It housed five garment factories, employing thousands of workers, as well as a maze of shops. The owner, a local politician connected to the ruling Awami League, only had permission to erect a five-storey building, but was not stopped from adding three more floors.

Charges by the White House and US secretaries of state and defense Thursday that Syrian government forces used chemical weapons have brought Washington to the brink of another war in the Middle East.

One decade after the Bush administration invoked the infamous pretext of “weapons of mass destruction” to launch a war of aggression against Iraq, the Obama administration is preparing to follow the same route to launch its own war for regime-change in Syria.

In a letter to members of Congress Thursday, the White House said that US intelligence believes “with varying degrees of confidence, that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.”

The letter reiterated Obama’s threat that any use of chemical weapons “is a red line for the United States of America,” adding that the White House “has communicated that message publicly and privately to governments around the world, including the Assad regime.”