Cultural Transformation: Health Care

I’m old enough to remember when going to see a doctor was a simple person to person transaction. After a visit you would get a bill in the mail and pay it. Health care is a deeply personal issue and when I look at the heath care mess today it seems that we’ve moved from the notion of a simple person to person human transaction to a complex, technocratically constituted system. What’s wrong with this picture? An array of “middle men” now have assumed as much importance in this scheme (or in some cases more) than that of healer and patient.

Intervening between you and your doctor is a whole infobureaucracy of insurers, pharmaceutical industry minions, paper-pushers, and second guessers. In my book Digital Mythologies, I wrote about this larger social and cultural phenomenon a bit in an essay that described the rise of technologically-fostered mediated relationships. Author James O’Dea who spoke at our conference last year describes this state of affairs as “the mechanization of culture”. Its mind-bending complexity is not only rendering the very process of getting care dysfunctional, it makes the ability to establish holistic and healing relationships difficult. As the Shift dissolves energies that support it, there will be great opportunities for alternative and holistic practitioners to step in and help restore balance of human dignity and direct, caring relationships in health care settings. Cutting edge technology will still be an important capability but will need to assume a much less obtrusive role in the healing process.