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Feb 25 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Public health, when implemented properly, is about maximizing freedom for everyone, beginning with those now most deprived of it. Allowing neoliberal actors—among both Dems and GOP—to associate public health with unfreedom in the popular imagination has catastrophic implications.
This was one of my core intended points in this attempt to recover public health from its overlapping neoliberal and biomedical perversions. thenation.com/article/societ…
Public health is an intrinsically emancipatory project. When done well, it can be the beating heart of participatory democracy and the pragmatic motor for justice, equality, diversity, and inclusion as actual public systems rather than just empty rhetoric. statnews.com/2023/02/24/fix…
To make this reality, we need a massive political-economic and cultural movement to transform US politics away from its faux-individualistic, punitive obsessions into one that actually supports each individual’s unique potential and freedom to realize it. nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

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More from @_Eric_Reinhart

Eric Reinhart Profile picture
Feb 26
The Biden administration says publicly and even more insistently in private that the reason they’ve not pursued better Covid policies is because Congress and the public has had no stomach for it and is unwilling to fund protections for vulnerable groups like the uninsured. 1/
But this has been a self-fulfilling prophecy and an excuse that the administration has repeatedly used to refuse to even request public health funding and obviously needed policies. They’ve given their own people instructions not to even speak about the issues publicly. 2/
The Biden administration hasn’t been hampered by an uncooperative Congress as much as they’ve simply chosen to pursue a continuation of public abandonment in place of public health while blaming others for their own supposedly forced choices. 3/
Read 4 tweets
Eric Reinhart Profile picture
Feb 24
“In sum, what US public health needs is an inversion of the power structure that governs it… we must reclaim public health as a collective political project by and for the people”

My final essay in a series of four this month is now out at @statnews. 1/
statnews.com/2023/02/24/fix…
A classic warning in public health: “A society that spends so much on health care that it cannot or will not spend adequately on other health enhancing activities may actually be reducing the health of its population.” No nation is as guilty of this practice as the US. 2/
But medicine’s corrosion of public health doesn’t stop at budgets and policies. Through its stranglehold on resources and power, the US medical profession has also distorted the very definition of public health and what is now widely believed to constitute relevant knowledge. 3/
Read 6 tweets
Eric Reinhart Profile picture
Feb 24
The medicalization of society and the ascent of neoliberalism have proceeded in tandem, and not just for contingent reasons. Clinical reasoning without an extra-clinical supplement is very often predisposed toward conservatism, radical individualism, and deepening inequalities.
Many have pointed to these dynamics, but usually characterize them as products of the class positions of doctors and their influence on epistemology, prejudice, and politics—all important. But there is also a conservatism at play that’s intrinsic to the clinical frame itself.
You can see this in the archives of medical anthropology, from observations made by Rivers to those later by Levi-Strauss, Turner, and now Fassin, among others.
Read 5 tweets
Eric Reinhart Profile picture
Feb 22
Today @thenation has published #3 of 4 interlinked articles out this month. In them, I seek to diagnose key internal problems undermining US healthcare and public health, and then prescribe steps to begin rebuilding US public health, safety, and trust. 1/ thenation.com/article/societ…
Essay #1—a primarily diagnostic assessment of US health systems failure—appeared two weeks ago in the NYTimes. 2/
nytimes.com/2023/02/05/opi…
Essay #2 ran in the New England Journal of Medicine. It outlines an ambitious infrastructural investment to build a new basis for US public health and safety policy: a national community health and justice worker corps with an initial 2 million workers. 3/ nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
Read 6 tweets
Eric Reinhart Profile picture
Feb 20
It was a privilege to speak with @NPRMichel on @CNN/@PBS' The @amanpour & Co. Show about collapsing US health systems, the end of American medical ideology, and the collective mobilization we need to rebuild US public health. There's much more to be... 1/
said––and, moreover, done. As I've been arguing, to fix US public health and remake our healthcare system, we need to shrink medicine and invert our health systems power structure. This is counterintuitive to some, but medical care today is primarily reactive. 2/
Most healthcare needs could have been avoided if we had community-based, lay-run preventive care systems. But because of overarching perverse incentives within the medical profession that also provide convenient accomplices for neoliberal policy that seeks to avoid public 3/
Read 13 tweets
Eric Reinhart Profile picture
Feb 19
Timeline:
-Wednesday morning, Feb 8, Chicago police chase, shoot, and kill Isidro Valverde.
-Hours later, the CPD chief blatantly lies about it to reporters.
-Aldermanic candidate Samie Martinez immediately attacks incumbent Rossana Rodriguez for trying to support the family.
1/
-9 days later, Rossana and I publish and article about the killing and coverup, calling for CPD accountability and policies to support preventive care rather than failed police models.
-A day after the article, @ChuyChicago endorses FOP-backed Martinez.
2/
 thenation.com/article/politi…
The TRiiBE here covers Chuy’s retributive politics as he systematically goes after progressive alders who have backed Brandon Johnson, hellbent on destroying the progressive movement if he can’t be its top dog. Chuy is not a progressive candidate. 3/
thetriibe.com/2023/02/chuy-g…
Read 5 tweets

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