Healthcare for our elders

[stinkbomb]

What would an anarchist healthcare system be like? Surely it couldn't be any worse than what is available now (uk). <br> <br>The reason I bring this up is because I have just visted my Father who is in hospital to have an operation to remove cancerous growths. The operation was cancelled because of the danger of anaesthetising him because he has severe bronichal problems. Problems which result from him having pneumonia twice when he was a child. He had pneumonia because he was brought up in absolute poverty, slum housing, no shoes to wear outside sometimes, shit food and everything else that comes with poverty. Some of his brothers and sisters didn't make it beyond childhood or early adulthood. <br> <br>But my Father is a survivor, he twists and turns, and he's made it 74years of age. Physically he's wrecked by a life of hard work, but his fighting spirit is intact. Or at least I thought it was until tonight. I visited him in a huge impersonal hospital where he is classed as a patient number, being fed cold food that he is refusing to eat. It's not the nurses fault, but it looks like he's in a prison. <br> <br>I've never really got on that well with him, being a very different generation, but tonight he said something which smashed its way through any defences I had put up. He looked me straight in the eyes and said "This is awful son, I deserve better than this" <br> <br>A lifetime spent lining the capitalists pockets, and then thrown on the scrapheap, and treated like a prisoner. <br> <br>So how are we going to treat our elders, those who have the wisdom gleened from a lifetime of struggle? <br> <br>

[DavidC]

Any system that views people as merely a source of profit is bound to treat them like crap. This is one of the reasons I support changing the system to one which views people as people, and treats them as such. <br> <br>Regardless of age, everyone of us is a human, and deserves dignity and care.

[Guest]

another thing is that we should promote healthy living.

[stinkbomb]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr><p>Any system that views people as merely a source of profit is bound to treat them like crap<p><hr></blockquote> <br> <br>I agree with you, so how would an anarchist society address the practicalities of health and social care? The knuts and bolts of it all. <br> <br>I can see how low key social care could be handled within communities/communes with people organising to look out for each other, but how about people who need specialised technology based medical care. While there's been a move in recent years towards community health practices which include facilities for small operations, the older smaller local *cottage hospitals* have been replaced by monolithic *general hospitals*. Would it be practical to have community hospitals rather than the centralised ones we have now. <br> <br>Another area is the use of technology in anarchist societies. If we sought to rely less on modern technology and more on holistic homeopathic healthcare what would be the likely impact. <br> <br> <br>

[Phoebe]

i dont' see why we should do without modern technology per sé. gamma knives, x-rays, incubation chambers and things like that are important to save lives. There're things we could do without (like the numerous pills and things that aren't proven to do anything, but cost loads). There are things we need to keep (vaccinations). <br> <br>Organising this so it works within a non-authoritarian framework would definitely be a fair amount of work to hash out, and personally i'd rather see a big hierarchically managed hospital than see people die. that isn't a political statement, but just one that until people hash out detailed models for handling work we need to swallow our dogma and deal with our common needs. the state can go (police, army, parliament) but the general services should be kept and de-corporatised or whatever. Also, a bigger issue before we think about how we might manage hospitals and stuff, is probably, resourcing such a thing once our main economic regulator (the market) has gone. Right now the market takes resources and moves them up a pyramid. we've identified that that's wrong. what would a different system look like, and how could it be democratised so that the right resources (the stuff that the hospital needs, cause once we've abolished money we won't just be able to give them money to pay for fresh drugs etc) goes to the right place (in the example, the hospital). maybe there could be some kind of volunteership thing in the community where people work helping as assistants at a given place 1 day a week rotationally sending requests to places where resources are available in return for some sort of incentive (meals, accomodation). I'm not sure. i don't really know much about Parecon or anything like that. but someone coming up with a detailed idea for how some sort of economy could exist on a macroscopic scale (such that drugs can be mass-produced so as to be able to produce enough for everyone when there are so many of us) would be nice. We'll still need vaccines, gamma knives and x-ray machines when the revolution's come and we have to plan at least somewhat so that those things will be available. The biggest problem people seem to have with anarchism other than the front pages of the tabloids is it's workability. I don't think we look enough into how to make it workable, by which i mean beyond having a very basic level of healthcare and water supply. The squatters amongst us may be used to those conditions, but we have to find ways to make life not so spartan (and i don't mean people need SUV's, or luxuries. i just mean having fairly high-quality healthcare, sufficient clean running water, electricity and/or gas, various communications media would also be vital) <br> <br>i'm completely off topic. anyway

[stinkbomb]

I think I understand what you mean by not doing without life saving technologies. But at the same time I wander if the enviromental damage that results from much modern technology (I also mean the health damage to ourselves) can justify the adoption of modern technology per se. <br> <br>I agree about the pharmaceutical industries and the development and pushing of pills for profit rather than need. Maybe if the role of medics and medicine could be demystified then people would feel more comfortable in self medicating with medications created from locally grown crops. Enviroment seems to have a great impact on becoming ill. Things like asthma, allergies, and cancers which are explained away as enviromental, seems to be growing. Stress and diet related illness like heart conditions account for a lot of medical resources. Obviously not all illness can be treated in this way, and if an anarchist society also becomes a healthier one then the question of how we care for our elders who will inevitably become frail raises it's head again. <br> <br>I suppose the question is really who decides how we organise that care. As you said it's likely to be a huge job to collate resources, or at least if it was to be organised centrally. I prefer the idea of breaking it down into more (self) manageable community decisions which reflect local needs rather than hierarchal, bureaucratic and impersonal resource allocation. Communities federating (for use of a better word) together to make regional decisions rather than something imposed downward. Recallable community delegates, people who have an interest in health and welfare, would meet as and when required to relay community needs to recallable workplace delegates who would relay what is available and likely to be available in the future, to allow some forward planning. <br> <br>I don't think you're off-topic, I agree that one of the most important areas anarchists must address is how we can self-manage the various needs we all have once the state and capitalist institutions are undermined and disregarded. If we can begin this within the shell we have now then all the better. <br> <br> <br> <br> <br>

[Phoebe]

i completely agree with decentralisation. what i was suggesting is that there's a lot to be said for juggernaut type hospital arrangements which have a lot of facilities to help people conveniently in one place (rather than dispersed basic medical help which would be available on a community level). the problem then becomes organising and resourcing such a project. i'm sure it must be possible. just really complicated. It helps to have a radiography dept and a fracture clinic near each other cause people break bones, and neither of those are much use without the other either.

[stinkbomb]

I don't understand what you mean by *juggernaut type hospital arrangements*. Do you mean an A&amp;E which could deal with large scale medical emergencies? <br> <br>You're right it is a bit mind boggling when you start to look at the amount of people who require some kind of hospital based treatment. Chances are that each of us will require some form of medical treatment at some time in our lives. That probably explains the positive attitudes that most people have now towards a national health service. I don't see those attitudes changing in a revolutionary or post-revolutionary situation. By that I mean imo the resourcing of it is unlikely to be contentious, but the way(s) in which medical care is provided and organised for is likely to be contentious. If people have reached a situation where they can see that being told what to do is oppressive then how will a medical hierarchy be viewed? Who knows what is best for you, the doctor with seven years *training* or yourself? <br> <br> <br>Out of interest does anyone know if the Spanish collectives included hospitals or general medical care? <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br>

[Phoebe]

um, just to check i'm getting your rhetorical point right. you're suggesting that people know what's best for themselves often more than a doctor right? <br> <br>i agree. having said that exhaustive medical understanding may well be beyond the reach of the average person just on the basis that: <br> <br>a) people have things to do like getting on with life <br>b) not everyone is interested in finding out how to diagnose things that could later be wrong with them. <br> <br>obviously commonly available basic guides on this kinda thing would be really useful on a day to day level. however you're still going to need skilled microsurgeons, neurosurgeons, people who can do heart-bypasses (although they'll hopefully be less in demand when people stop eating cows and other animals, which IS a necessity if there's going to be enough food for everyone in the world) <br> <br>i'm quite worried about unintentional loombreaking that could occur in an attempt to revolutionise everything and all become self-sufficient (communally or individually, by personal choice). i think it would make sense to go easy on things til we have a real way to resolve our basic needs in the short term during the transition from state to anarchy. <br> <br>Phoebe

[stinkbomb]

Well I've had a good look for anything on healthcare collectives in Spain and come up with nothing. In one way it doesn't surprise me given the nature of the revolution. With all the fighting going on the priority was probably getting the injured into any type of hospital or to any type of doctor. On the other hand it surprises me that the CNT weren't more organised among healthcare workers. Anyway... <br> <br>Yeah it was rhetorical wasn't it? [img]/wwwthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] <br>I do think people can know better than doctors when it comes to their own healthcare. Unfortunately, like many things, medicine has become overly professionalised and mystified to the point that many people trust a doctors judgement over their own. <br> <br>I agree with your point about people just getting on with life, or being too busy making the bosses money now. But I'm not sure about your point that exhaustive medical knowledge is beyond most of us. Access to information is more widely available on the internet now than ever before. As I hinted at before I think doctors have a vested interest in maintaining a certain mystique around what they do. <br> <br>Hopefully loombreaking, intentional or not, can be minimised by discussing and formulating some kind of anarchist strategy towards health and medical care before the revolution. Sorta what we've been doing on a very small scale here. If we had been discussing this a few years ago I would have been for dismantling or at the very least limiting most modern technology. That's changed by discussing it with other anarchists like yourself. <br> <br> <br> <br> <br>

[Phoebe]

i've just been reading peirats' book "Anarchists in the spanish revolution". He puts the entire failure of the revolution down to the fact that beforehand they had mistakenly looked to revolution as a panacea of all ills, instead of building up an infrastructure to run during (and afterwards? maybe, at least once the fighting's over, although anarchism is often said to be constant revolution) the revolution with supply routes and things like that. thus they often got bogged down in activity against superior forces where they should have been together coordinating a series of guerilla attacks alongside keeping the community secure and well-prepared. It's the first book i've read on spanish political history but this guy sounds (from reading him) like he's quite happy to discuss strengths and flaws in the movement openly without trying to gloss over things in order to make it look more than it was or trying to underplay anything (it was published by freedom press so the latter is pretty expectable) <br> <br>it's going to take more than 2 of us getting together discussing this. i wonder if there are any coherent strategies for a new future being planned and if there's any way these could be discussed publicly so that everyone could have a say and stuff. and if there aren't any people discussing anarchist revolution at least, that's kinda sad. i think we should organise more. there don't seem to be many organisations that are anything but fronts for larger or smaller groups of protestors. <br> <br>Phoebe

[stinkbomb]

Yes I think Peirat's analysis is pretty sound. One of the problems is that theorising and creating coherent strategies sometimes takes second place to the idea of doing something, anything. When I hear or read people saying we don't need to think about the future society or organise for it I get pissed off. If we're serious about overthrowing capitalism and the state then we should be prepared and have something in place already. <br> <br>A while back on another list a poster called for discussion forums to look for practical anarchist answers to the problems we all face. Sadly I don't think this has been taken up yet. Part of the problem is that the only national meeting for anarchists is once a year at the Bookfair, so it's tempting to put stuff off until then. It might take some time but I think it's kind of essential if we're serious about revolutionary change. <br> <br>

[Phoebe]

i don't know if it's necessary to devise solutions to all the problems. i was just thinking more about devising solutions for our basic needs such that we can sustain a revolution. After that i'm sure people would come up with ideas. it's just you can't only generate supply lines, hospitals and the rest of it when you need them. you need them to already there. you need ideas for how to employ them too. but yeah, we're probably on a similar train of thought here. shame noone else is leaping in and joining in the discussion as readily as they do when it's time to bash a free-capital troll. <br> <br>phoebe