Health Care Reform: Anarchist Public Policy

From part 2:

"Promoting optimal human health means eating nutrient dense foods, living in a nontoxic environment, being physically and emotionally engaged in the world, and using medicine as a tool to determine what specific elements a patient is lacking (such as a magnesium deficiency, or spending 8 hours a day in a sick building). Taking pills created from petrochemicals, cutting invasively inside the body, and dosing the body with radiation would be a last resort once it was clear the body wasn't capable of healing itself."

I would argue that this is the starting point for human-centered health care. This would vary by region, vary by spiritual path, and vary based on a person's individual biochemistry. Some people thrive on a raw foods diet; others need cooked nutrient dense foods to thrive. This variability is entirely natural, and a human-centered health care system would recognize this.

Once in a while on this blog I dip my toe into what an anarchist public policy might look like. I recognize the difficulty and arrogance of this ... I see it more as playing around with ideas, not as some magisterial pronouncement of How Things Should Be :) Nor do I consider these ideas to be 'canon' with anarchist theory. So please consider this post in that light.

My starting assumption is that destroying 1/8 of the US economy and starting over from scratch isn't in the cards -- but I'm also assuming that systemic change through shifting of priorities would be possible.

With the caveats out of the way, I would consider these changes to be positive and in comportment with basic anarchist beliefs:

* Highly regulate all chemicals used in buildings, food, and industry.

The Obama adminstration has taken baby steps in this direction, but it is simply unconscionable that our lives are filled with toxicity:

“About 40 percent of (human) deaths worldwide are caused by water, air and soil pollution.” Source

10 year old girls should not be drinking BGH enhanced cow milk out of plastic bottles, nor should they be ovulating. Male sperm counts should not be 50% lower than a century ago. Plastic nanoparticles should not be more common than algae in the oceans. Mercury should not be in our lakes. Rivers should not be oily to the touch, nor should they catch on fire. 90% of our topsoil should not be in the rivers and oceans. Food should not be grown from oil. Uranium should not be allowed anywhere on the surface of the Earth.

This is evil.

If we don't change these practices, then our species deserves to be replaced by cockroaches.

* End the oligopoly on accreditation, and allow for alternate ways to demonstrate medical competence. Recognize that a decade of schooling and training in Western medicine isn't the best way to treat every single health problem.

* Allow patients to choose their own doctors and treatment methods, with significantly less interference from regulators or insurance actuaries.

I recognize the harm that could come from this -- it would need to be done very carefully. However, many beneficial treatment methods are also prevented from helping patients. It is far, far more common for the media to report scare stories than they are to report doctors being shut down for employing non-FDA approved methods that have clearly demonstrated an ability to help certain patients. As an anarchist who considers authority to be suspect, I trust in the power of individuals to determine their own path to optimal human health. The critical part is that people need to be able to seek out these alternate treatment paths while they're healthy and able to make informed decisions; it is difficult to make a good decision while you're sick and in pain.

* Significantly reduce the power of corporations, and put an end to for-profit medicine.

Yes, for-profit medicine can create wonderful things like pacemakers and prescription drugs. They might even be better at this than a nonprofit would be (although this point could be argued).

But the opportunity cost is significant. For-profit corporations promote drugs at the expense of vitamins, 'miracle foods' instead of solid nutrition, and are now beginning to patent the very basis of life itself.

* Stop subsidizing large insurance companies and hospitals, shift the money into community-based health care.

Any form of health care involves trade-offs, or (at worst) rationing. These decisions are better made at the local level. Local community organizations should be funded and empowered to decide their own (nondiscriminatory) priorities, and to promote the health of their community in a manner best adapted to their local health needs.

* Aggressively promote community-based agriculture, breaking up large corporate-owned farms and training a generation of unemployed young adults how to raise their own organic food and bring it to market.

* Significantly reduce highway subsidies, shifting funding into bike paths and electric rail. Encourage walkable, livable communities.

* Aggressively promote less toxic, renewable energy development. Significantly reduce the use of polluting fossil fuels.

* Aggressively promote less toxic, highly energy efficient home-building and remodeling.

These are the sorts of policy changes that would promote human health, and reduce the toxic burden we place upon our environment (which eventually comes back to affect human health).

It's important for people to be healthy ... but in the end, humans will only be as healthy as the environment we live in. If we don't address the larger issue of environmental health, then every effort at promoting human health will eventually hit a brick wall.