Following talk by GB:

DP: Michael Moore’s latest film contrasts the US health service with Cuba’s and finds Cuba the best.

JT: Emiseration does not necessarily give rise to revolution, as the anarchist would have it happen. In Paris the student struggle affected the French workforce at a time when living standards were highest. A deep connection is missing with the first world. Fifty years of the NHS parallels decolonisation and Marxist influence.

SE: The public health movement is important, not just the curative side. The Boar War had a huge impact on thinking. Before the NHS, soldiers were badly treated and unhealthy. The statistics on public heath are incomplete and misleading.

DD: GB’s proposition is intriguing: the retail/wholesale model. Capitalism’s need for a healthy workforce was the driver. There should be efforts to democratise the health service. Good housing and diet are needed. Capitalism also needs a compliant workforce. Every country has its rich and poor; there are rich people in poor countries. It is difficult to knock capitalism down because it is so powerful. One way is to join the RD&E Trust, which has elected governors. Infiltrate and stage a coup.

FB: The competitive nature of capitalist society gives rise to mental health, including for the rich, since it increases stress, which is not taken care of. There is a waiting list for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.

CM: I don’t believe capitalism can be reformed to benefit the majority; we need revolution, but there may be a revolution by stealth happening, with a beneficial effect on mental health. There groups of people finding ways to ‘sideline’ capitalism, and feeling empowered by being more in control of their lives, also choosing alternative health care treatments. On the rich-poor divide, the economist, Susan George put forward an 80/20 rule, whereby in the ‘developed world’ 80% of the population is involved in the capitalist system as workers or capitalists, and 20% are living off the informal economy; in the ‘developing world’ it is the other way round, with 80% finding various ways to live outside capitalism, and some are making links to the ‘sideliners’ in the developed world. This may be part of the tendency for the nation state to be losing its power and relevance.

PH: I am not so hopeful, judging from colleagues’ attitudes and lifestyle which is mindless and bizarre – they drive to the gym to work off their fat due to a sedentary lifestyle. People believe that the NHS must ‘make me better’, which can result in violence against health care staff. How much more money has to be spent for them all to be happy?

SE: The NHS is controlled by a medical elite.

PH: NICE rations the money.

GB: The NHS suffers from endless reorganisation, computer systems that don’t work and bureaucracy. Lawyers make money out of patients’ complaints against medics. Private Eye regularly satirises the absurdities.

JT: The idea of revolution happening behind the backs of capitalists is attractive because building barricades is not nice, but capitalism can accommodate that kind of thing. Complementary medicine is a multi-million dollar business. Also there are dangerous ideas, such as those of Rath, who denied that anti-retroviral drugs can cure AIDS, and advocated high doses of Vitamin C instead. It has been said for a while that the nation state is being broken down by capitalism but capitalism needs the nation state and loves borders. It benefits from the populist hysteria about immigrations, taking advantage of the two-tier workforce.

DP: There as a potential epidemic resulting from antibiotic-resistant TB which could be worse than HIV because there is no technical solution to address it. In the UK, TB is on the increase, and is associated with poverty and poor housing. I am also concerned about state interventions, prohibitions and bans and compulsory medication. Another concern is that the NHS depends on overseas doctors, such as Polish doctors, trained there, practising here; a new form of imperialism. Cuba is not socialist but has some socialist elements, and has exported skilled medical people. Also there is the issue of aspirin as a preventative for heart conditions, an idea which is not promoted because aspirin is too cheap because it is a generic drug. And then there is the situation in France, where it is likely that an increase in working hoirs will have a deleterious effect on health.

FB: It is important for people to have their own family doctor but that’s been lost.

CM: The NHS is not as valuable as people believe it is. We don’t need it, or benefit from it as much as we believe. Most of its resources are used for people aged 85 (the age now of senescence) and over, not much for the opinionated, working and voting public. There is a high level of iatrogenic disease, and not just super-bugs in hospitals. This focus on the NHS is ideological; the NHS is a sacred cow. Also there a ‘blame the victim’ conspiracy, such as The Ecologist exposed in the case of smoking causing cancer, and much else, like cot death, whereas it’s not smoking alone, it’s in conjunction with other pollution, in the workplace, in cities, roads etc.

BG: I don’t go along with all doctors doing harm, eg can’t treat a broken leg with aromatherapy. Doctors have been sucked into the capitalist way of doing things. They bury their mistakes and blame the victim. A rise of social provisions gives rise to a healthy workforce. In Germany welfare services were developed to keep the workforce quiet. Since then there’s been a reversal. Now there’s a rise in mental health problems, which have a direct physical effect, especially on the poorest. Capitalism tends to creep into everything.

On moved to be independent of capitalism, in 1844 there was the cooperative movement but this was part of the capitalist system, all things get sucked in. Yes, there’s a movement from below but you can’t skin capitalism layer by layer, it’s more like a tiger, we need to take the claws out, all good things don’t make all well. The transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe has been devastating especially for males, hence resorting to vodka. Equality is the only way to deal with those things.

Aspirin as a preventative against heart conditions has been replaced by statins, which also delay the onset of diabetes. But mixed drugs have side effects.

last point, bacteria resistance is explicable by networking theories, not Darwinism.

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