Corporate medicine may achieve its goal creating greater customer retention, loyalty, and repeat business. Patients are not well-served, however, when the commercialized, privatized business model is applied to health care. The result is superficially satisfied patients who make greater use of the health care system at the expense of their own health.
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I was initially attracted to the subject of healthism because I felt I’d been a victim of health messaging. But I was also attracted by a sense that something deeper was going on. I now see that the taken-for-granted – the questions that don’t get asked in media coverage of health issues or in the policy positions of governments — unites my blogging topics. In whose interest is neoliberalism? Medicalization? Conformity? Non-holistic medicine? The commercialization of health? Healthism? More often than not the answer is that it’s not in my interest. Nor is it in the interests of the society I want to live in. And that makes these topics personally meaningful to me.
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Categories:
Health & Medicine,
Politics & Issues -
Tags: corporations, cosmetic surgery, disease mongering, doctor/patient relationship, health care, healthism, healthy lifestyles, inequality, lifestyle, medicalization, neoliberalism, overdiagnosis, pharmaceuticals, politics, psychology & psychiatry, risk, social determinants of health1 Comment -
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~ Conformity and corporatism: Surgically altering one’s appearance (e.g., designer feet) presumably increases one’s chance of success in a society that commodifies bodies (i.e., in a society where salary, career advancement, social status and marriage prospects are influenced by appearance). Altering one’s personality with psychopharmaceuticals allows one to project the qualities necessary for success in a highly competitive society.
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Categories:
Health & Medicine,
Politics & Issues -
Tags: corporations, cosmetic surgery, disease mongering, doctor/patient relationship, health care, healthism, healthy lifestyles, inequality, lifestyle, medicalization, neoliberalism, overdiagnosis, pharmaceuticals, politics, psychology & psychiatry, risk, social determinants of health2 Comments -
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Social determinants of health (often abbreviated SDOH) refers to unequally distributed social and economic conditions that correlate with unequal and inequitable distributions of health and disease. Presumably there is a causal relationship between the two, not merely a correlation. Definitively identifying the causal mechanisms, however, is difficult. A great many things influence our health, including things we’re not even aware of yet, and it’s difficult to isolate and scientifically study the ones we can identify.
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Health & Medicine,
Politics & Issues -
Tags: corporations, cosmetic surgery, disease mongering, doctor/patient relationship, health care, healthism, healthy lifestyles, inequality, lifestyle, medicalization, neoliberalism, overdiagnosis, pharmaceuticals, politics, psychology & psychiatry, risk, social determinants of health0 Comments -
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It’s always hard to be sure about these things, but I think the reason I decided to take a ‘sabbatical’ from blogging last July was that I was interested in too many seemingly unrelated topics. Writing about all of them left me feeling like I never got to the ‘meat’ of any one of them. And I couldn’t convince myself to focus on just one or two things, since that would mean abandoning the others, which I was unwilling to do.
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Categories:
Health & Medicine,
Politics & Issues -
Tags: corporations, cosmetic surgery, disease mongering, doctor/patient relationship, health care, healthism, healthy lifestyles, inequality, lifestyle, medicalization, neoliberalism, overdiagnosis, pharmaceuticals, politics, psychology & psychiatry, risk, social determinants of health2 Comments -
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By
Jan -
September 30, 2011
I’m still on “sabbatical.” Mostly reading. Thinking about what I most want to write about. I know what my interests are — the problem is, I have too many. Meanwhile, here are some blogs I enjoy reading.
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I’m taking a break from frequent blogging – want to take time to read, do some research, reflect, and think about what I most want to write about next. At the moment, my inclination is to write about the history of medicine, starting with the Enlightenment and the transformation of medicine into a science in the 19th century. I want to think about what light that sheds on the 20th century.
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While they were mindful of and grateful for the powerful advances in medicine, they believed that social and economic conditions which influenced the life of a person and a community had a greater impact on a person’s life and health than did the power and might of all of medicine.
They believed that medicine was a profession that involved more than a technical set of skills and a high income. They accepted the responsibility of caring for the whole person; mind, body and soul.
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Medical science’s individual servants are crushed under the weight of its promises, becoming commonplace and losing their authority; they are simple service providers who can be sued – often justifiably, moreover – if they commit an error. While the medical researcher, the scientist, and some surgeons whose skill amounts to genuine artistic genius retain immense prestige, in many cases the doctor is now seen only as a repairman who gets the machine running again until the next breakdown.
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How are we to protect ourselves from the emotional hazards of the practice of medicine? How are we to stand with our patients through the very worst while avoiding depression, significant stress reactions, and even substance abuse or addiction?
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The real beauty of direct-pay primary care is not only that it’s attractive to patients. It can be a way for struggling primary care physicians to maintain a financially viable practice. The average patient pays $700 to $800 a year for membership. According to a report from Kaiser Health News, this is three times more than a doctor makes for each patient in an insurance-based practice. Not to mention the extra time and the absence of aggravation that comes when doctors eliminate insurance companies.
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The public may not readily appreciate the adverse financial consequences of a health care system in which the majority of doctors become specialists. But it would understand the story of a primary care physician who chose to end her practice because she was undervalued, overworked, frustrated, and underpaid.
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In part one of this post I explained how a new anatomical understanding of disease in the 19th century changed the practice of medicine. Prior to this insight, there was no need to expose the body to observation or to touch parts of the body that were normally clothed. The anatomical theory sent doctors on a search to discover what was happening inside the body. The new physical exam required much greater exposure and invasion of the body, a significant change for the patient experience.
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The need to reveal private and intimate parts of our bodies is a routine occurrence in medical practice today. Though it may offend our modesty, we take it for granted that the embarrassing moments of a colonoscopy, a Pap test, or a prostate exam are necessary for our health. Has it always been so? Have doctors always expected patients to disrobe? Have young male technicians always exposed the chests of female patients in need of a routine EKG? Have patients always been willing to allow doctors and their staff to view parts of the body normally seen by only the most intimate of partners? The answer is a resounding no.
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By
Jan -
February 24, 2011
[T]he government and private insurers had begun a concerted effort to contain the escalating cost of health care by fiat. The kindly family doctor was diminished, downgraded, and de-professionalized to a “provider,” a bland descriptor on a clerk’s requisition form. Even worse, New York State’s Medicaid, insuring the indigent, classified me as a “vendor,” a term which sent me into orbit then, and which today still rankles. Hemmed in by profession-specific price controls, reams of restrictive regulations, heavy-handed threats of federal penalties and expulsion from Medicare participation for suspected infractions, I became disheartened.
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By
Jan -
January 13, 2011
What’s not widely known, however, is that this is not the first time the physical exam has gone into decline. We know from surviving medical treatises that the exam was an integral part of a physician’s practice in ancient Greece and Rome. This continued to be true until the late Middle Ages (1300-1500). The hands-on exam then disappeared for hundreds of years, reemerging gradually in the late 18th century.
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