#health care

life-advocate-feminist:

Also affordable healthcare and better social and financial support for families

ALSO! More coverage for out of hospital care providers! Often times the hospital administrations will monopolize coverage and treat incoming patients from other out of system providers like shit (Hi! I’ve been a victim of this mindset). This includes midwives, fertility awareness instructors, nutritional therapists and registered dieticians, etc. We would save soooo much money as a nation if the hospital systems stopped hoarding all the resources and artificially inflating prices.

Credit:George McCalman

“First, do no harm.”

In the 1980s, the medical establishment didn’t always heed this call when it came to HIV/AIDS.

HIV/AIDS may be manageable now, but in the early days it was a mystery and often ignored, as it primarily affected gay men and was accompanied by stigma and shame. Many doctors and medical administrators stood by as the disease took its toll. Eric Goosby was one of the pioneers who shed light and provided much-needed treatment.

The fight against HIV/AIDS has consumed Goosby’s entire career, and millions of lives have been bettered thanks to the intensity of his commitment. Goosby received his M.D. in 1978 from UCSF, completing his residency there in 1981 — the first year AIDS was clinically observed by UCLA doctor Michael Gottlieb. By the time his fellowship at UCSF ended in 1983, San Francisco was in a full-blown crisis, and Goosby was on the front lines, a member of the revolutionary Ward 86, the first dedicated AIDS clinic in the country.

Credit: UCSF 

Figuring out the nature of the crisis, while trying to treat it, absorbed the doctors of Ward 86, who developed the “San Francisco Model” of care: a patient-centered collaboration with a wide network of carers, including social workers, mental health care providers, addiction specialists and community organizers. This model has become the standard of care around the world. Goosby focused on establishing partnerships with methadone maintenance clinics to help addicts obtain HIV services, as IV users were less likely to seek treatment and the black community was overrepresented among injection drug users.

Even as Goosby and Ward 86 attacked AIDS on multiple fronts, patients were slipping away. Goosby and the other doctors fell into despair during therapeutic group sessions and struggled to maintain their personal relationships. The fight was further complicated by a lack of response from the federal government, who ignored the epidemic for many years. There wasn’t funding for research, education or treatment programs for this national health crisis. In cities that weren’t using the “San Francisco Model,” those with HIV/AIDS were suffering, especially patients from marginalized communities that were being misdiagnosed and poorly served.

Dr. Eric Goosby, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, gives his perspective on 30 years of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. Credit: HIV.gov

Fed up with inaction, and having lost his 500th patient, Goosby moved to Washington, D.C., in 1991 to direct HIV Services at the Health and Human Services Department, spreading the approach of the San Francisco Model throughout the country. Even as he took on this important federal role, he practiced part-time in an AIDS clinic in the city’s public hospital, D.C. General. As an administrator, he brought funding and services to 25 AIDS epicenters and to all 50 states and U.S. territories, and rose up the ladder to become director of the health department’s office of HIV/AIDS policy. He later became President Clinton’s senior advisor on HIV-related issues and helped initiate a dialogue on racial disparities in HIV/AIDS that formed the basis of the Minority AIDS Initiative.

As treatment slowly began to advance in the U.S., Goosby turned his attention to the rest of the world, where poorer nations, in particular, were finding themselves devastated by the disease. After working on scaling up treatment in Rwanda, South Africa, China and Ukraine as CEO of Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation, Goosby was nominated by President Obama to serve as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator and administer the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar), a $48 billion program credited with cutting AIDS deaths by 10 percent in some countries.

The remarkable career of Eric Goosby has no end in sight. In addition to serving as the U.N. special envoy for tuberculosis, Goosby is a professor of medicine at UCSF. And, of course, he returned to care for patients at Ward 86, which continues to provide treatment and set standards for prevention and care around the world.

“It’s just something that is almost like breathing to me. I love practicing medicine; I love helping people in that way; I like using my mind in that way; maybe I love pushing people around; maybe I love telling people what to do. I don’t know what it is, but I cannot imagine not doctoring.”

silver-tongues-blog:

whatevercomestomymind:

bruja-del15:

and i oop-

Boost this. Malicious fucking compliance y'all. Tie up their legal system with tens of thousands of cases. Burn their state government’s cash on this issue. Force them to play by the Nth degree of this idiotic rule.

i love uncivil obedience. follow the letter of the law so close that it shows just how ridiculous and unfair the law is

outforawalkb1tch:

to-worlds-more-beautiful:

weirdlylyricalnotes:

teacupsandtimelords:

odinsblog:

Finally, some goodnews.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/health/abortion-pills-fda.html

This is so great because if anyone is caught impeding or messing with these deliveries, it’s MAIL, that makes it a FEDERAL crime, whoever fucks with these packages gets charged FEDERALLY, they face up to five years in prison.

[ID: A tweet by @ nytimes that reads, “Breaking News: Women can get abortion pills by mail for pregnancies up to 10 weeks without seeing a doctor in person, the FDA ruled. The decision comes as the Supreme Court considers whether to roll back abortion rights or even overturn Roe v. Wade.” Attached is a link to the article and a screenshot of the title and subtitle of the article. The article was published Dec 16, 2021. The title reads, “F.D.A. Will Permanently Allow Abortion Pills by Mail” and the subtitle reads, “The decision will broaden access to medication abortion, an increasingly common method, but many conservative states are already mobilizing against it.” /end ID]

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064598531/the-fda-could-permanently-lift-some-restrictions-on-abortion-pills

Adding a link that isn’t blocked by a paywall

FDA relaxes controversial restrictions on access to abortion pill by mail

This is great but do remember to check if there’s a weight limit on the brand you take. Idk about abortion pills but I do believe you have to take two plan B if your above a certain weight.

bronwynofhighbrite:

This picture has been circulating all over social media and I have more to add:

• Delete all period cycle tracking apps off your phone today.
• Do not tell anyone why you want to take your trip, especially over text/apps.
• Do not tell anyone the real state/destination of your trip.
• Have everyone on your trip turn off their phones. Use written directions or a burner phone. Do not use burner phone to open any personal apps. Dispose of after trip.
• Only use cash while purchasing ANYTHING on your trip.
• Take “vacation” photos to post later. Be cautious of geo-tags/only post screenshots of the original photos.

Some people might say this is being extra or overly precautious, but this really is the reality we are facing. People have been imprisoned with murder charges in certain states- some for literal miscarriages. If you are a person that ends up in this situation, the state can and will use your data against you as evidence in court. Do not leave a paper trail. If they want to treat us like criminals, we’re gonna move like criminals.

metalheadsforblacklivesmatter:

This is a reminder that Roe v Wade wasn’t just about abortion.

It was about privacy.

It didn’t state abortion is legal.

It stated that you had the right to do whatever you want, and we can’t determine if you’ve had an abortion without invading your privacy.

To see how abortion bans are a violation of privacy look at the abortion cases in Texas. Neighbors are sueing neighbors because, “You were pregnant. You left the state. Now you’re not. That’s strange. I think you left to have an abortion.”

Do you WANT people in your business like that? Sneakily checking the addresses on your mail to see if you’re ordering abortion meds? To stalk you to the point where they can tell if you’re pregnant and when you’re suddenly not anymore? Companies going through your search history to see if you’re on abortion websites?

-fae

cronagorgonzola:

marxandangels:

Remember that people who aren’t women also need and want abortions. Include and protect trans and intersex people in this conversation. Keep watch for terf rhetoric and dogwhistles. Terfs will use this as ammunition.

And when we push for gender-inclusive language in legal and healthcare contexts, it’s not just because being called the wrong word makes us feel bad. If the language of a healthcare law or regulation uses specifically gendered language, that creates a loophole that can be used to deny trans people coverage. Ask any trans man who’s had to try and find gynecological care, or any trans woman who has ever needed a prostate exam. Yes, it is difficult and often humiliating to be called the wrong words, but what we’re mostly worried about is losing our access to the healthcare we need alltogether.

As I’ve noted several times, I generally try to ignore whatever is currently passing for ‘governance’ in America at the moment, cuz I just ain’t got the patience, or ability to do all that emotional labour. However, they will keep on doing things that call back to the medieval period, so we’re gonna have to talk about it.

So currently in America, which is defo a first world country and for sure very prosperous and a good place to live, there is some debate about whether or not sick people should be driven into bankruptcy, given the audacity of their instance on being ill. (Have they tried not getting ill? IDK.) 

Some Americans, who are for sure good Christians and well into Jesus, need you to know that no one should be obligated to help sick people pay for medical care. To whit:

How charming.

This idea – that health care is something that requires a) payment, and b) is an individual, not a community, concern is what we’re going to talk about today.

Now, as you may be aware, European medicine was underpinned by the idea of humorism which was central to Hippocratic medicine. Hippocratic medicine itself was developed from the tradition of Greek natural philosophy. Hippocrates, obviously, gave his name to the discipline, but the Hippocratic Corpus – a series of sixty some essays on medicine – was developed by several authors and compiled around 250 BCE. Galen then came along sometime around 129 AD and updated the ideas slightly, and notably had some influence on theories of anatomy and pharmacology, but was still a stan for humor theory.

As the theory went – the body held four humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. These humors, in turn corresponded to the four seasons, the four elements, four temperaments, and four stages of the life cycle like so…

More or less, the idea was that if your humours were balanced you would remain healthy. If something got out of whack, you got sick. To get better you needed to get those humors back into balance. A lot of this idea was based on observation. If you were so sick to your stomach you were vomiting bile it sure did look like you had too much and your body was trying to rid itself of it. Bad cold? Same thing with phlegm.

Medieval medicine took this classical basis and ran with it. Classical medical texts were copied and edited in monasteries and monks also wrote their own works on herbal medicine and botany based off their own observations. As groups of devout Christian men with access to medical knowledge, monks considered it to be their religious obligation to provide medical care for members of their communities. 

As a result, most monasteries ended up having a sort of informal hospital. Because they were actual fucking Christians.

There were a lot of other groups practicing medicine in the medieval period however. Barber surgeons, famously, did a lot of medical work that involved cutting people. Basically if you were able to keep a razor sharp enough to shave someone, odds were it was sharp enough to do minor surgery. Homeboys would do stuff like blood letting, dentistry, looking after soldiers during and after battle, and also keeping your cut fresh AF.

Barbers were medical professionals and for sure got paid. However, the medical services they provided were generally in reach of your average (read: peasant) medieval person.

There was also something for the ladiez to do medically – that is look after other ladiez. (Did you know that half of all people in the medieval period were actually women? No for real. I’m serious.)  Midwifery was some real shit, and basically one of very few professional options for individual women at the time. (Fuck yeah the other option was sex work – shout out to my girls.)

Midwives were typically apprenticed at a young age in order to learn the trade, and had to have a reference from their parish priest as to their good character in order to do so. They then learned all about assisting the labour process. Labour was an exclusively female medical event – with men being excluded from the birth chamber. Midwives were certainly professionals, but the great majority of people (again, peasants) could still afford their services.

There were also straight up apothecaries who were sort of like modern day chemists/pharmacists who made drugs and medicines. By the thirteenth century they had their own guilds, and they often worked alongside other medical practitioners in order to establish what drugs should be made or  

There were, of course, also dedicated physicians in the medieval period. There were several schools that taught medicine, including the much-celebrated Salerno, and later Montpellier, which is still in operation.

These institutions trained doctors including the famous Rogerius who wrote a killer book called The Practice of Surgery (Practica Chirurgiae) round about 1180, and also came up with the term ‘lupus’ and Giles de Corbeil who wrote a series of influential medical poems on the urinary tract and pulsology. The university system was making some pretty good advances in medicine, if slowly. People started doing more work with human dissection and learned more about anatomy. (Fun fact – high medieval Europe did not totally ban human dissection, but Pagan Rome did. Bring that up when people say the medieval period was backwards.)

The medical schools were drivers of medical thought and research and the people who trained in them often ended up working for the elite. You had to go to school for years to be licensed, and it wasn’t cheap, so you charged.

That’s where the trouble started.

After the Black Death showed up, people were not too enthused about medical practitioners. If they knew so much, why couldn’t they stop the plague?

People began cracking down on non-licensed medical practitioners. If these people were actually skilled in terms of medicine then for real, why TF was everyone dying on the regular? Soon laws began to propagate stating that only licensed, i.e. university educated physicians could practice medicine. This fucked shit up.

Suddenly a lot of people who had been offering health care services couldn’t. The barber who pulled out your rotten teeth? Not licensed. Apothecaries who knew everything about how to create drugs? Part of a guild that learned through apprenticeship, not university. The monks who had killer medical libraries, actual running hospitals, and gardens full of medicinal herbs at their disposal? Only educated in the cloister.

It was even worse for women who could not go to university. In the medieval period all students had to take holy orders in order to join university, meaning that they were clergy members, if only for their time in school. Women couldn’t do that. That meant that there was no legal way for midwives to practice, despite the fact that only women were supposed to be involved in the birth of children.

So the ranks of people who could legally provide medical care suddenly dropped. Meanwhile, the only people who could legally provide it needed to see that cash money in order to provide medical care because they made a huge investment of time and money to get where they were. 

In some instances, where you lived also determined whether or not you could get medical care. A trained physician would want to stay where the greatest number of potential (wealthy) clients lived. They, therefore, tended to stay in cities, or revolve around courts where their educational investments paid off. No one was going out to the country side to see to the peasants, you feel me? Moreover, the peasants couldn’t drag themselves off to a monastery for help when they got sick anymore, because monks weren’t supposed to be practicing medicine. There just wasn’t anywhere to go for help. By the early modern period, then, the poor had been stripped of a lot of the options they could exercise before.

All of this helped to create the system that America is experiencing today. Healthcare became a luxury – something that the rich elite had recourse to, and which everyone else had to do without.  It is also a hugely modern ‘system’. No one is compelled by their religion to take care of the sick, despite the fact that America loves to call itself a Christian country. We compel bright young people who want to make money to go to med school, because there is a huge financial incentive. Being a medical doctor gets you paid. We do not tell them they have a responsibility to treat the sick when they are trained.

This health care system also routinely marginalises people who provide medical care but are not physicians, in particular those who are providing medical care in one of the traditionally ‘feminine’ roles. Nurses and midwives have much much more patient contact than doctors do, but are paid nowhere near as much. Hell, in America you might be paying out the nose for medical care and only ever see a nurse practitioner anyway, such are the vagaries of for-profit healthcare. So the nurse-practitioner ain’t getting paid, but you are still paying, and somehow all of this is fine and good.

None of this is to say that medical practitioners shouldn’t be paid for their services.  It’s a hard job. You have to learn a lot. In the UK we really treat our junior doctors terribly and they deserve so much more. In the medieval period people still managed to treat people at all levels of society and still make a good living. The people who could afford to give away free health care in the medieval period (monks) had really comfortable life styles. The lower-level practitioners like barbers and midwives made their living on volume. There were options for patients and practitioners to enhance their quality of life.

Overall, then, while medicine has moved on from the medieval period and is much more effective – the healthcare options that many people in America have are actually much worse in comparison to what was available seven hundred years ago.

Perhaps even more distressing for enthusiasts of using ‘medieval’ to mean bad (which you should never do), is that America is a less caring society than Europe in the year 1300. Medieval Europeans were subject to strict class systems, many were unfree, and most lived lives of grinding poverty and work. Most people weren’t allowed to move down the road if they wanted to - but they were still considered deserving of health care.

Tell me one more time who the barbarians are.