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Biomedical subjects

V Navarro

Publications and source records attributed to V Navarro.

At least 199 records · Page 11Linked to original sources
PubMed1984

A critique of the ideological and political positions of the Willy Brandt Report and the WHO Alma Ata Declaration.

This article (1) analyzes the Willy Brandt Commission Report and the WHO Alma Ata Declaration within the socio-economic and political context that determined them, and (2) makes a critique of the ideological and political assumptions that both documents make. Through an assumingly apolitical and technological-administrative discourse both documents reproduce the major positions upheld by the hegemonic development establishments of the Western world. The article analyzes (through a study of what is being said and not said) how those positions appear in the documents. It is indicated that (1) their understanding of the causes of underdevelopment and its major health and disease problems and (2) their suggestions for change based on 'moral calls for social justice' and 'enlightened self-interest' are faulty and insufficient. Alternative explanations and solutions are presented.

Delivery of Health Care↗
PubMed1984

The determinants of health policy, a case study: regulating safety and health at the workplace in Sweden.

This article analyzes and criticizes the " technocratic " view of occupational health and safety policies, which sees the values of the personnel in "post-industrial" regulatory agencies as the most important determinant of those policies. It takes an alternate position, which explains occupational health and safety policies as primarily resulting from the different degrees of political power of the two major classes (capital and labor), and from the set of influences exerted on the regulatory agencies by the instruments (e.g., parties, unions, trade organizations) of those classes. It shows how an analysis of the historical evolution of those classes in Sweden and their conflict in both civil and political societies explains Swedish occupational health and safety policies better than a mere analysis of the regulators' views. And it concludes that the occupational health and safety policies in Sweden are not identical to those in the U.S.--as the " technocratic " theorists assume--but rather offer more protection to the workers than U.S. policies do. This situation is a result of labor having more power in Sweden than it has in the U.S. The different class formations and class behavior in the two societies are compared, and the implications of this comparison for occupational health and safety policies are discussed.

Accidents, Occupational↗
PubMed1984

Medical history as justification rather than explanation: a critique of Starr's The Social Transformation of American Medicine.

This paper discusses the major positions presented in Paul Starr's The Social Transformation of American Medicine and critically analyzes the major ideological and political assumptions that sustain Starr's explanation of the evolution of the institutions of medicine in the United States. These assumptions include, among others, that the evolution of medicine is an outcome of conflicts among the different interest groups that exist within medicine, interacting within the parameters defined by the majority of Americans whose beliefs and wants eventually determine what occurs in medicine, and the hegemonic positions in the ideology, practice, and institutions of medicine are dominant because of their powers of persuasion. This paper questions these positions on theoretical and empirical grounds and it presents an alternative explanation of the evolution of medicine. In this alternate explanation, the evolution of medicine (including its recent corporatization) is viewed as the outcome of power relations defined not by the majority of Americans but by a series of conflicts between classes, races, genders and other power groupings, within a matrix of dominant-dominated relations, in which dominance is reproduced by coercion and repression, and not merely by persuasion. Specific historical events are analyzed and alternative explanations are given to Starr's interpretations.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1984

A critique of the ideological and political position of the Brandt Report and the Alma Ata Declaration.

This article analyzes the Willy Brandt Commission Report and the WHO Alma Ata Declaration within the socioeconomic and political context that determined them, and makes a critique of the ideological and political assumptions that both documents make. Through an assumedly apolitical and technological-administrative discourse, both documents reproduce the major positions upheld by the hegemonic development establishments of the Western world. Through a study of what is being said and not said, the article analyzes how these positions appear in the documents. It is indicated that 1) their understanding of the causes of underdevelopment and its major health and disease problems, and 2) their suggestions for change based on "moral calls for social justice" and "enlightened self-interest" are faulty and insufficient. Alternative explanations and solutions are presented.

Developing Countries↗
PubMed1984

Selected myths guiding the Reagan Administration's health policies.

This article analyzes four major assumptions that guide the Reagan Administration's health policies: 1) the Administration received an overwhelming popular mandate to reduce the federal role in the U.S. health sector; 2) the size and growth of federal social (including health) expenditures are contributing to the current economic recession; 3) the costs to business of federally imposed health and safety regulations have contributed to making the U.S. economy less competitive; and 4) market intervention is intrinsically more efficient than government intervention in regulating the costs and distribution of health resources. Based on these assumptions, the main characteristics of the Reagan Administration's health policies have been 1) a reduction of federal health expenditures and, very much in particular, expenditures to the poor, handicapped, and elderly; 2) a weakening of federal health and safety regulations to protect workers, consumers, and the environment; and 3) the further privatization and commodification of medical services. This article shows that there is no evidence to support the assumptions on which these policies are based. Quite to the contrary, all available evidence shows the opposite: 1) the majority of Americans want an expansion of federal health expenditures and a strengthening of federal health regulation; 2) U.S. government expenditures and regulations are much more limited than those of other countries whose economies are performing more satisfactorily; and 3) those countries with larger government interventions have more efficient health care systems than the American one, where the "free market" forces are primarily responsible for the allocation of resources. Thus, major Reagan Administration health policies are based on myth rather than reality.

Economic Competition↗
PubMed1983

Where is the popular mandate? A reply to conventional wisdom.

Current federal policies include substantial cuts in government expenditures for health programs and for care of the poor, elderly, and handicapped, and the weakening of government regulations in health and medical care. These policies are presented by many political, academic, and medical leaders as responding to a popular mandate both to cut government expenditures in all non-military areas and to diminish government intervention in health care and medicine. Also, it is assumed that the tax revolt that occurred in the late seventies further triggered the need for tax cuts and cuts in all social expenditures, including health and educational expenditures. The evidence of North American people's wants, wishes, and desires--measured by leading polls--leads to opposite conclusions, however. In the period 1977-1982, there has been continuous popular support of government programs for health and education; for care of the elderly, poor, and handicapped; and for strengthening government regulations in health care and medicine. During these years, there has been a popular mandate not to decrease but, rather, to increase such interventions. Thus, the current policies cannot be presented as responding to a popular mandate. In fact, the mandate is for policies precisely opposite to the ones which are being implemented by the Reagan Administration.

Financing, Government↗
PubMed1983

Radicalism, Marxism, and medicine.

This article presents a critique of recent radical interpretations of medicine and provides an alternative explanation of such interpretations. It analyzes 1) the articulation of medical practices, knowledge, and institutions within specific modes of production and social formations; 2) the dual functions of medicine within capitalist relations of production; 3) the reproduction of power within medicine; and 4) the meaning of capitalist, socialist, and communist medicine. The political practice derived from these analyses is also elaborated.

Communism↗
PubMed1983

The determinants of social policy. A case study: regulating health and safety at the workplace in Sweden.

This article presents an analysis and critique of the "technocratic" view of occupational health and safety policies, which sees the values of the personnel of the "postindustrial" regulatory agencies as the most important determinant of those policies. An alternate position is put forth which explains those occupational health and safety policies as primarily the result of different degrees of political power of the two major classes (capital and labor) and the set of influences exerted on the regulatory agencies by the instruments (e.g., political parties, unions, trade organizations) of those classes. It is shown how an analysis of the historical evolution of those classes in Sweden and their conflict in both civil and political societies better explains the Swedish occupational health and safety policies than the mere analysis of the regulators' views. It is concluded that the occupational health and safety policies in Sweden are not identical to the U.S. policies--as the "technocratic" theorists assume--but rather they offer more protection to the workers than the U.S. ones. This situation is a result of labor's greater power in Sweden than in the United States. The different class formations and class behavior in both societies are compared, and the implications of this comparison for occupational health and safety policies are discussed.

Accidents, Occupational↗
PubMed1982

The crisis of the international capitalist order and its implications for the welfare state.

This article analyzes the current crisis of the international capitalist order and its consequences for the welfare state policies of developed and underdeveloped capitalist countries. Special emphasis is given to the impact of the crisis on state health care policies in those countries. The first part discusses the response of capital and labor to the crisis, with special focus on capital's political and ideological interventions in the areas of production, consumption, and legitimation; and their realization as health care policies. The second part analyzes the major capitalist responses to the crisis--the "market' and the "social contract' strategies--and their consequences for health care policy. The last part critically evaluates the call for a new economic order and its limitations.

Delivery of Health Care↗
PubMed1982

The labor process and health: a historical materialist interpretation.

This article discusses the relationship between the labor process and health, using historical materialism as the method of analysis. Section I conceptualizes the relationship between the elements of the labor process and health. Section II analyzes the historical evolution of the labor process and its consequences for health, with a special emphasis on the effect on health of different forms of alienation. Section III examines the changes in the different branches of economic activity and their impact on health, with added discussion of the consequences of the international mobility of capital for different forms of expropriation of health. The awareness of the relationship between work and health, and the operational meaning of that awareness for labor strategies, are also presented.

Employment↗
PubMed1980

Work, ideology, and science: the case of medicine.

This article discusses the nature of work, ideology, and science in Western capitalist societies. It analyzes how capitalist or bourgeois ideology reproduces capitalist dominance in the spheres of production (Section I), politics (Section II), and science and medicine (Section III). Also, this article explains how the working class responds to that capitalist dominance through a continuous process of class struggle. Sections I, II, and III show how class struggle affects bourgeois dominance in the processes of production, politics, and science and medicine, respectively. Special focus in Section III is on the analysis of (a) how bourgeois dominance appears in science and medicine, (b) how bourgeois ideology appears and is reproduced in medical knowledge, and (c) how class struggle determines the nature of scientific and medical knowledge. In this section, an alternative mode of production of scientific and medical knowledge, different from the prevalent bourgeois one, is presented and discussed. In all three sections, medicine and medical knowledge are chosen as the primary points of reference.

Democracy↗