Ivan Illich on Health Care....

I was thinking about health care this morning and bumped into these ideas from Ivan Illich, the radical former Jesuit, who usually thinks in ways that I find imaginative and creative.

Here are some thoughts:

Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.

I knew a doctor once who told me that to me "it was strep throat, but to him it was meat and potatoes." Illich reminded me of that idea. If we cured disease there would be no need for doctors. We cannot have that can we. especially if you are a member of the AMA.

Here are two more Illich thoughts:

Effective health care depends on self-care; this fact is currently heralded as if it were a discovery......Healthy people are those who live in healthy homes on a healthy diet; in an environment equally fit for birth, growth work, healing, and dying... Healthy people need no bureaucratic interference to mate, give birth, share the human condition and die.