Mutualist Kevin Carson proposes a three-point Market Anarchist program to deconstruct the health care system and make it available to the masses:
1. Rein in the licencing cartels.
2. Eliminate drug patents.
3. Mutualize public and nonprofit hospitals.
The idiot “Anarchists” who promote government takeover of health care would do well to listen to real Anarchist solutions. Carson, a prominent mutualist, proposes such a solution.
The problem is that, under the present system, you’re often forbidden to buy anything but porterhouse steak. While the system allows many competing levels of finance, the licensing cartels prohibit alternative levels of service. You can’t go to someone who has just sufficient training to perform the service you actually need; no matter how obvious or elementary the diagnosis, or how simple the procedure, you have to pay the full price of an MD’s college and medical school training, and the deferred income during his residency. Thanks to the licensing cartels, a dental assistant or advanced practice nurse in most states can’t set up an independent practice to perform even the simplest and most straightforward procedures, without being under the “supervision” of an MD or DD. Of course, you may very well never see the dentist who’s “supervising” the assistant who cleans your teeth. And when you go to the clinic, you may never see the MD who’s “supervising” the APN who writes your prescription. But they’re there–and the cost of their student loans and McMansion is part of the operating cost of the business. The effect is to erect an entry barrier against competition from cheaper service by independent practitioners with less than a med school education, and to raise the overall operating expenses of the business.
The Prime Directive 
Didn’t you get the news? In the post-scarcity utopia, you’ll just shake a health care tree and a doctor will fall out of it to treat you.
Nah, just kidding. Carson is 100% right on this one.
Thanks a lot for the link.
I disagree with Carson simply because of the 1900s early “medicinial bullshit,” that was rampant and caused shitloads of cancer. The *idea* of “independent practitioners with less than a med school education” is noble and a brilliant goal, but in the end what happens is exploitation takes place with people selling shit you don’t need or providing services that fuck you up. Shoe fitting machines that took an x-ray of your feet and essentially gave you more radiation than you would ever recieve over a lifetime. Or bottles of “herbal medicine” with lead as a coloring agent, and so on. There *has* to be an open system of accountablity and trust. Not *necessarily* the medical school monopoly that Carson is talking about (I don’t believe in schools in this vein), but *something*. You cannot trust someone new without known supervision from someone who is already trustworthy. This is true in almost any field. One particularly apt comparison is the place of midwives within childbirth in America. In Europe midwives are quite common. Their “accreditation” is done via midwife to midwife association. That is one knows another who wants to get into the field and are trained to do the task, and through word of mouth they build their own trust within the community. In America, however, corporate interests like to play off the “virtue of C sections,” since they’re long hospital stays and a huge surgery bill.
Most health care problems are on the otherside of the coin, what you eat, what level of activity you participate in, and so on. It’s a hygine problem that consumerist capitalism has exasperated.
To the snarky-commenting post scarcity dude: with hidden markov modelling and neural nets doctors might just well be replaced. ;)
Thank you, Why, on presenting us with the standard anti-market rhetoric. If we follow your reasoning to its natural conclusion, we shouldn’t have an open market in *anything.*
Accountability on a market is a non-issue, because it’s an infinite regress problem, especially in the capitalist system where standards and corruption are most often hidden.
[…] How to Make Health Care Anarchistically Better by Francois Tremblay […]
Tell me then why “over the counter medicine” had thorium and other radioactive crap in it up until the mid 1930s until the FDA banned radiation from being sold as a “health treatment”? Shouldn’t the market have compensated for this unhealthy paradigm long before the government got involved? The early 1900s were a bane to human civilization due to how much crap was being fed to us despite *known problems* with the stuff. And of course capitalists will attempt to hide the problems with stuff but I am at a loss as to how the market, without an external mechanism, can just fix it. Health deterorates over a long period of time, you wouldn’t even necessarily know what was causing you to be sick without some people, some trustworthy people, out there testing crap and saying what is and isn’t healthy.
Sorry for the double comment, but just so you know, I’m as free market as they come. I just place a much higher emphasis on the ‘free’ part. ;)
“Tell me then why “over the counter medicine” had thorium and other radioactive crap in it up until the mid 1930s until the FDA banned radiation from being sold as a “health treatment”? ”
Another statist asshole who believes that Anarchy means absence of rules. Get outta here.
And if you’re gonna defend the FDA, one of the most murderous organizations in North America, we’re gonna have words.
And there was already a market compensation for fraud. People who sold medications that killed people had to compensate people for their frauds, just like in any justice system worthy of that name. The FDA was a fraud, from the beginning.
Good thing the government got involved–you don’t see ANYONE being hurt by drugs these days. (Yes, that’s sarcasm.)
And more importantly, NO ONE ever dies because medications are withdrawn needlessly by the FDA.
(the actual estimation of deaths due to FDA regulation is in the tens of thousands every year, which is why I say that the FDA is one of the most murderous organizations on the continent)
Two words: patent medicine. In the days of the old west and early twentieth century everything from mercury to laudnum was sold as cures by exploitative con men. Without a modicum of regulation there will be havok, as evidenced by the outcry for regulation of the market (through ingredient lists at first) from the victims of patent medicines. How is this not a failure of the market? Why won’t these companies continue to make defective or misleading products if they can buy off their victims, in the same way defective cars only recall if the cost of nuisance suits reaches a certain level? How many deaths due to medical fraud are acceptable before regulation or market forces step in? More than one? More than 100?
It would behoove you, Francois, to not be so knee-jerk abrasive if you hope to carry on a civil conversation. However if your goal is simply to edify yourself rather than convince anyone, you are on the right track.
I love the strawman you presented, saying that I was defending or supporting the FDA. “Compensation” did squat in the late 1800s early 1900s. People got away with selling people POISON because there was no trust mechanism in place and how are you going to find the culprit in any case? I imagine the FDA could exist in the same manner as Underwriters Laboratories does, so my comments about the FDA are largely to point out that yes, the markets, the wonderful beautiful markets, were killing people enmasse and the government had to get involved because the markets could not handle this simple delimma. As is always the case with markets, they trend toward statism. There’s no rule that the markets must always provide that which is good for you, in fact, the rule is often the converse, that the markets want to provide as much bad stuff for you as possible, as long as the bottom line is upheld.
Also, the FDA is a corporate whore who will overlook a companies drugs if enough people are paid off, which is why we have millions of people dying from drugs that were approved but necessarily withdrawn. The FDA takes a drug companies word for what they do (all a drug company does is submit paperwork showing the drugs uses and the FDA writes off on it, without a third party at all), unlike UL, Inc. An anarchist drug anaylisis program would necessarily build a web of trust where drugs are shown to be bad if they have significantly harmful attributes. And the drugs would be heavily tested in all manner of ways. Ironically, the way things are set up now, drug companies put their shit out in the wild quietly avoiding the hazards that they cause, make *you* pay for the drugs, to be their “in the wild test subjects.” Then they pay off some lawyers to make everything go quiet and hope that most people who died from said drugs don’t have families to complain.
Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscopes were in every major shoe store in the USA. There are no reported cases of people “getting sick” from them (outside of the workers who used them), but the reality is more that most people wouldn’t even know how they got sick or what caused it. Thus precluding them from even attempting to get “compensation”. Given the amounts of radiation that were dosed it is certain that a large number of people had health issues relating to the use of these machines. A statistical certainity.
“the markets want to provide as much bad stuff for you as possible, as long as the bottom line is upheld.”
You’re talking about the profit motive. That’s capitalism, not free market. Jesus, why are you reading my blog if you’re so stupid?
“Without a modicum of regulation there will be havok, as evidenced by the outcry for regulation of the market (through ingredient lists at first) from the victims of patent medicines. How is this not a failure of the market?”
What market? AFAIK, there was no justice market in the early 20th century. We’re talking about State regulation v more State regulation here.
“It would behoove you, Francois, to not be so knee-jerk abrasive if you hope to carry on a civil conversation. However if your goal is simply to edify yourself rather than convince anyone, you are on the right track.”
The subtitle of my blog used to be “you probably shouldn’t be here.” Maybe I should put it back, since the message apparently didn’t stick. In short, if you’re not an Anarchist you probably shouldn’t be here and I have no intention of wasting my time trying to deconvert you on a blog comments thread. I think it’s a futile endeavour. If your intention is only to oppose my worldview, instead of providing constructive criticism from a MARKET ANARCHIST perspective, just get off my blog.
I’m a critical care paramedic, with more training in emergency medicine than virtually any person graduating from nursing school. thanks to the partnership between the State and nursing cartels, i am unable to work in an ER, where i could effortlessly provide superior care relative to a RN.
having a heart attack? doctor can’t get the airway secured? no where else to turn?
i hope the Statists enjoy their sub-standard care.