To live well: health care or life project? Part I

AbstractTo live well is a universal human aspiration as well as the ultimate goal of the services that take care of people’s health. In this paper, two different ideas are discussed about how to achieve it: health care and life project.Part I begins with a detailed account of human degradation and the social inequities responsible for the unprecedented social and cultural breakdown of the actual society. Under this interpretative framework, the medicalization of human life as result of the alienating consumerism is analyzed as well as the excesses it entails from both health care institutions and health services users. By exploring the reasons of medicalization, it becomes clear that its influence in our actual lifestyles has driven us to be obsessed with being healthy and horrified of diseases; this works as a very effective mean of social control from the powers that maintain and deepen inequality. As such, the first to benefit from it is the health industry. This constant concern for health takes us away from our goal of living well since it causes anxiety, insecurity and disquietude.In conclusion, different considerations about the inconveniences of devoting all our energies towards health care are offered and it is suggested that instead we all have the responsibility of creating a more hospitable and inclusive world