could healthcare function under anarchy?if so how?

Question

because without   the "big institutions" of state and capitalism (for example drug  companies,in the UK the NHS,in the us healthcare insurance and the accompanying beaurocracy etc.)who would manage hospitals,make medicines,build the medical factories,make sure the ambulances get there on time,design the hospitals,design the medicines,get  the raw materials etc

Comments

the question seems to have the underlying assumption that "healthcare" is merely what the modern capitalist world defines it as: another industrial institution, dependent upon and part of the network of institutions that pretty much defines and controls modern life for humans (and beyond).

in any anarchist world i would choose to live, no such institutions (or "industries") would exist. "healthcare" would simply be another dynamic and integrated part of living. there would still be individuals with more interest and skills in helping others take care of their own health, and there would still be an abundance of natural materials from which to obtain "medicine".

what there would not be: the complications of such complex industrial systems; the specialization and division of labor required for industrial medicine; the private ownership and hoarding of materials and skills; etc.  

also, life would not be so completely immersed in materials and activities that are so obviously toxic. combining that with much smaller human social structures, we end up with much less sickness and disease to deal with.

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i was just listening to someone yesterday talk about lime disease, which becomes more and more common in the u.s., and how there aren't allopathic remedies because there isn't money in it, but that an herbalist who got it (once they figured out what it was), promptly created a remedy that worked for him (with substances from the same land that they got the disease on, btw).

so i'm going to get that info and send it to my friend out of state who also has lime disease.

that's the scenario in a nutshell, no?

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steven harrod buhner, by chance?

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if you're asking if that is the herbalist, i don't know yet.

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i was asking about the herbalist, yes. he's done quite a bit on lyme disease.

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yep, lyme is a nasty one. my understanding is that part of the issue is that it frequently does not get diagnosed until it is too late to catch it fully. i know 3 people with it, and each of them was not diagnosed for at least a year after symptoms first started showing. they will likely have some level of symptoms for the rest of their lives, so they have been told.

it is for that reason that after i had been bitten by a tick in the southeast a couple years ago, as soon as i saw symptoms - my visible symptoms were for rocky mountain spotted fever, not lyme - i went to urgent care and got some intense antibiotics. i had a worse reaction to the pills (i had not taken scrip meds for probably 30 years) than i had to the tick bite, and i likely got it in time. that is one situation where time is definitely of the essence.

apparently, there are 5 common to humans tick-borne diseases (with lyme and rocky mountain spotted fever being the most well known), and most often if someone gets one of them, they have one or more of the others as well. very few ticks apparently carry only one of those pathogens. edit: the medical industry treats all 5 with the same drugs, best i can tell. a more natural approach might be a bit more specific/selective.

yet another reason why i love living at high altitude in a dry and fairly inhospitable environment. :-)

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i would also be interested in how an herbalist approached lyme. especially if an herbal approach could be successful well after the time of infection. allopathic medicine seems to be able to deal (with pharmies) with it if caught very early. but that is apparently pretty difficult (catching it early).

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http://buhnerhealinglyme.com/

just starting to look at that site. seems a bit new-agey, but hey, whatever works.

i'm glad dot and af brought this up!

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I got lyme disease a few years ago and only found out because the left side of my face stopped working. I never got the bullseye thing and just dismissed other symptoms that I had until the left side of my face was paralyzed, so I finally went to the doctor. I guess it's hard to catch it if one doesn't have the noticeable external symptoms like the bullseye on the skin. Where I live, it's somewhat common to get a tick on oneself and sometimes it's hard to even know unless you see it on you. It's probably because deer (common carrier of ticks) live in close proximity with humans, due to humans invading their habitat, leaving them nowhere to live really.

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for those who are interested, the following is what i got from the contact:

to anyone who has Lyme disease or lives in areas where it is endemic I would strongly encourage reading 'Healing Lyme' by the herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner. The treatment I have used is taken from this book and it has worked fantastically well for me - though it won't be for another 12 months until I know whether the treatment has actually cured me. A couple of months after starting the treatment all symptoms disappeared and have not returned. And I had pretty severe symptoms. Because I was travelling at the time I got Lyme rather than buying the herbs in bulk and encapsulating them myself (which would have been the cheapest option) I got Buhner's basic formula in capsule form from a place in Vermont called Green Dragon Botanicals - run by Timothy Scott, another very interesting herbalist and author. I highly recommend his products.

The time difference between what is considered acute and chronic Lyme disease is only a few weeks so I think that even your friends that have had the disease for some time can really benefit from the herbal protocol that Buhner has developed. The main difference, in terms of treatment approaches, between the acute and chronic phases is that antibiotics only have a good success rate during the acute phase - that is when they are taken within a couple of weeks of the infection occurring. Like about 90% of people who get LD I had no idea I had been infected until severe symptoms manifested but I guessed that it had probably happened three or four weeks earlier. So, basically by the time I realised what was going on I had already passed into the chronic phase. So I didn't bother with antibiotics at all. And like I said I have had excellent results so far from the herbal treatment. That said I would still probably suggest to anyone that has just been infected to take antibiotics AND the herbs (and that is hard for me to say because of my general antipathy towards the use of antibiotics).

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thanks for sharing, dot!

Answer 1

Current way life convinced you of an idea that healthcare or more so sickcare is something you will die without. Like religious people who believe in god, we believe that in order to survive you need healthcare. What you are trying to replicate already exists and does not work. More so, it disables and maims more people than it helps. You will not need that biomedical industrial complex under anarchy.