Gar Lipow wrote:
>
> True as far as it goes. Medical professionals should practice medicine.
> But there are quite a few other types work which save lives within the
> medical profession. Nurses, aides, medical technicians ("luxuries which
> capitalism is destroying in Russia) are every bit as essential as
> doctors. Our own U.S. health care system is destroying itself by a war
> on these profession.
There is a contradiction that might operate [pun] under socialism (or any regime) as well as under current capitalism. The survival rate of surgical patients in a hospital is in more or less direct proportion to the number of that type of surgery performed in a given hospital. The reasons for this bear out Gar's argument that "there are quite a few other types work which save lives within the medical profession," but in an uncomfortable way. The more times a surgical team performs an operation, the higher its success ratio. This means that one has to choose between (a) overworked medical teams or (b) lower rate of survival of patients.
There are ways to get around the production of elites insofar as that 'production' has political or economic roots (differences in education, etc.). But when it is sheer quantity of practice that creates an elite, *that* is hard to get around.
Carrol