What would a socialist health care system look like? A sketch

Health Care Analysis

Volumn 5, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 195-204

  Loewy, Erich H ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HEALTH CARE ACCESS; HEALTH CARE AVAILABILITY; HEALTH CARE DELIVERY; HEALTH CARE NEED; HEALTH CARE SYSTEM; POLITICAL SYSTEM; SOCIAL ASPECT;

ANALYTICAL APPROACH; HEALTH CARE AND PUBLIC HEALTH; NINETEENTH CENTURY; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH; CAPITALISM; ECONOMIC COMPETITION; HEALTH CARE RATIONING; HEALTH PERSONNEL; HEALTH SERVICES ACCESSIBILITY; HUMANS; INCOME; INTERNATIONALITY; NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE, UNITED STATES; RESOURCE ALLOCATION; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SOCIAL VALUES; SOCIALISM; STATE MEDICINE; UNITED STATES;

EID: 0030806539     PISSN: 10653058     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1042(199709)5:3<195::AID-HCA228>3.0.CO;2-Y     Document Type: Article

References (17)

1. This definition is a fairly standard one to be found in almost identical form in any good dictionary. See, for example Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
2. Throughout his writings Marx does emphasise the desirability of democratic process. To him, it seems, the so-called 'dictatorship of the proletariat' was a transitory process which would eventually lead to the classless state. Whatever one may think of this, it certainly does not denote that communism (an economic) was wedded inexorably to dictatorship (a political system).
3. This difference was pointed out by one of the reviewers of my original manuscript. It is of central importance.
4. Daly, M. (1994) Introduction. Communitarianism: a New Public Ethics Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, CA
5. This brief sketch can be amply documented in government documents.
6. When I speak of the American labour movement, I am inaccurately referring to that in the United States: inaccurately because America consists of two rather vast continents of which the United States occupies a relatively small land mass with a relatively disproportionate amount of power.
7. The history of the labour movement in the United States is peripheral to our topic. Interested readers are referred to a number of standard works dealing with this subject. See, for example: Beard, M.R. (1968). The American Labor Movement: A Short History Greenwood Press, New York, NY.
8. Blum, A. (1972). A History of the American Labor Movement American Historical Association, Washington, DC.
9. Sorge, F.A. and Friedrich, A. (1987). Sorge's Labour Movement in the United States: A History of the American Working Class from 1890-1896 (transl. Kai Schoenhals), Greenwood Press, New York, NY.
10. Navarro, V. (1989). Why some countries have national health-insurance, others have a national health service and the U.S. has neither. Social Science and Medicine 28(9), 887-898.
11. This point is made by John Dewey throughout much of his work. See especially: Dewey, J. (1991). The public and its problems. In, John Dewey: the Later Works Vol. 2. ed. by J.A. Boydston and B.A. Walsh, Southern Illinois University Press Carbondale, IL.
12. I have developed this concept further in Loewy, E.H. (1996) Moral Strangers, Moral Acquaintance and Moral Friends: Interconnectedness and its Conditions, SUNY Press, Albany, NY.
13. In work elsewhere I differentiate between first order or primary needs and define these as those goods or services which underwrite biological existence (food, water, shelter, warmth and so forth) and social or secondary needs (conceived as education and health care). See: Loewy, E.H. (1990) Commodities, needs and establishing healthcare: a communal perspective. In, Changing Values in Medical and Healthcare Decision Making, ed. by U.J. Jensen and G. Mooney, John Wiley and Sons,
14. Chichester and Loewy, E.H. (1989) Suffering and the Beneficent Community: Beyond Libertarianism, SUNY Press, Albany, NY.
15. This quote is from Daniel, N. (1985). Just Health Care, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.
16. Loewy, E.H. (1993). First or second class? Is building health care systems like running an airline? Business and Professional Ethics Journal 12(3), 69-82.
17. Loewy, E. H. (1996). Guidelines, Managed Care and Ethics. Archives Internal Medicine, 156, 2038-2040.