Suchergebnisse

The "health care crisis" has stimulated large corporations to be come active in health policy and program developments on national as well as local levels. While "rationalization" of health services is rapidly occuring within the present period of economic crisis, specific reorganization strategies for the health sector are being discussed among capitalist planning bodies. These early discussions are key to shaping a class stand to eventually transform health ser vices delivery under monpoly capital control.

Chapter 1: History of the Corporatization of American Medicine: The Market Paradigm Reigns -- Chapter 2: Pharmaceuticals, Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Drug Store Chains, and Pharmacy Benefit Manager/Insurer Integration -- Chapter 3: Medical Practice: From Cottage Industry to Corporate Practice -- Chapter 4: Medical Malpractice Crisis: Oversight of the Practice of Medicine -- Chapter 5: Big Data: Information Technology as Control over the Profession of Medicine -- Chapter 6: Physician Employment Status: Collective Bargaining and Strikes -- Chapter 7: Conclusion: Progressive Directions.

Addressed is the political & theoretical meaning of the holistic health movement which has arisen in the United States in the 1970s. A variety of holistic theories & therapies which attempt to view the patient as an integration of body, mind, & spirit are challenging the form & content of dominant Western scientific medicine. Criticized are the holistic health movement's largely privatistic & individualistic tendencies; it may provide new avenues for corporate & petty-bourgeois marketing efforts in the context of the present broad dissatisfaction with medicine's current organization. It is believed that holistic medicine contains many elements that may be forged into a strong people's health movement. Described is how the rise of scientific medicine in the late nineteenth century led to the demise of a prior holistic & political understanding of health. The social medicine movement of the 1840s in Europe possibly contributed politically to the holistic health movement today. An understanding of health & disease must recognize a totality of the human organism within its particular social context, & address the nature of the political economy which is the social origin of many diseases in advanced capitalist society. Modified AA.