Health care without capitalism

Ivan Illich worries about the NHS

There is a very interesting BBC report on Cuban health care workers in Java I am not uncritical of Cuba, how can I say that a country where only one party is allowed is perfect, I suspect as well that there are aspects of the country which are very bureaucratic, however on ecology, poverty, development, education and health Cuba is getting an awful lot right.

Just being prepared as a tiny and relatively poor country to go in with medical aid to Pakistan after the earthquake, Java, to send doctors to the barrios in Latin American countries is impressive. The US cannot even run a free health care system for its own citizens.

Capitalism is not good at delivering health care, the stats show that dollar for dollar it is strikingly inefficient. Pharmaceutical firms have huge monopoly power which pushes up the price of life saving drugs. Doctors in market economies may be tempted to over medicate. The social and environmental causes of ill health are ignored, profit is made by making ill people pay for cures, healthy people are not good for medical capitalism.


This in a nutshell is the critique of the logic of the market, the market serves the market, if something goes wrong and we fix it this makes money, if it does not go wrong in the first place through careful prevention then there is no profit to be made.

Greens, socialists, various religious traditions point to a basic humanism we should do what is good for humanity, which is usually good for what might be controversially termed 'the natural order. The market is generally seen as a mechanism for doing this but it has various very destructive tendencies.

Ivan Illich's classic book Medical Nemesis is a starting point if you want to look at the unintended and destructive aspects of health care, ironically or not when he was dying of cancer he self-medicated and navigated his own path to death. I am less skeptical of doctors than him, however many of his points hold and inform green policies on health care.

Green Party policies can be found here