What does it mean to be a “just” and “caring” society when we have only limited resources to meet unlimited health care needs? Do we believe that all lives are of equal value? Is human life ...priceless? Should a “just” and “caring” society refuse to put limits on health care spending? In Just Caring, Leonard Fleck reflects on the central moral and political challenges of health reform today. He cites the millions of Americans who go without health insurance, thousands of whom die prematurely, unable to afford the health care needed to save their lives. Fleck considers these deaths as contrary to our deepest social values, and makes a case for the necessity of health care rationing decisions. The core argument of this book is that no one has a moral right to impose rationing decisions on others if they are unwilling to impose those same rationing decisions on themselves in the same medical circumstances. Fleck argues we can make health care rationing fair, in ways that are mutually respectful, if we engage in honest rational democratic deliberation. Such civic engagement is rare in our society, but the alternative is endless destructive social controversy that is neither just nor caring.
The United States is the only industrialized democracy that allows its citizens to go entirely without health care for lack of funds or to be bankrupted by medical bills. Author Pamela Behan was ...confronted by the effects of this policy failure during her previous career as a nurse, and with Solving the Health Care Problem, she examines how it can be corrected. Behan explores American health care policy failure by looking at how two other, similar nations—Canada and Australia—managed to adopt health care protections, and compares their stories with events in the United States. Behan's systematic comparison of all three nations shows that the factors responsible for these different results center on the responsiveness of each nation's political institutions to its voters. In particular, Australia's parliamentary system and labor party and Canada's constitutional flexibility and national- provincial dynamics proved central to each nation's adoption of national health insurance. In contrast, similar efforts in the United States became less frequent and less ambitious after they were repeatedly blocked without even coming to a vote. These dissimilarities reveal the institutional and class issues that must be addressed for the United States to successfully confront the health care problem.
Recent years have witnessed an upsurge in global health emergencies-from SARS to pandemic influenza to Ebola to Zika. Each of these occurrences has sparked calls for improved health preparedness. ...InUnprepared,Andrew Lakoff follows the history of health preparedness from its beginnings in 1950s Cold War civil defense to the early twenty-first century, when international health authorities carved out a global space for governing potential outbreaks. Alert systems and trigger devices now link health authorities, government officials, and vaccine manufacturers, all of whom are concerned with the possibility of a global pandemic. Funds have been devoted to cutting-edge research on pathogenic organisms, and a system of post hoc diagnosis analyzes sites of failed preparedness to find new targets for improvement. Yet, despite all these developments, the project of global health security continues to be unsettled by the prospect of surprise.
A collection of important essays on the health and well-being of African Americans in the southern United States.For African Americans in the southern United States, the social determinants of health ...are influenced by a unique history that encompasses hundreds of years of slavery, injustices during the Jim Crow era, the Great Migration, the civil rights era, and contemporary experiences like the Black Lives Matter movement. In Black Health in the South, editors Steven S. Coughlin, Lovoria B. Williams, and Tabia Henry Akintobi bring together essays on this important subject from top public health experts.Black activists, physicians, and communities continue to battle inequities and structural problems that include poverty, inadequate access to health care, incarceration, a lack of transportation, and food insecurity. As the result of redlining and other historical and contemporary injustices, African Americans are less likely to own a home or to have equity, which places them in danger of financial ruin if they experience an illness such as a heart attack, stroke, or cancer, for which they are often at greater risk due to many social and environmental factors. At the same time, African American communities display many strengths and are often very resilient against these structural inequities. The use of community coalitions is a valuable approach for addressing health disparities in African American communities, and improving the cultural competence of health care providers further reduces the effects of health disparities.With essays spanning topics from culturally appropriate health care to faith-based interventions and the role of research networks in addressing disparities, this collection is pivotal for understanding the health of African Americans in the South. Public health scholars have examined racial disparities in health in the United States broadly and in specific cities, but this is the first edited collection to focus on African Americans in the South both as a whole and as a distinct population.
Ensuring America's Health explains why the US health care system offers world-class medical services to some patients but is also exceedingly costly with fragmented care, poor distribution, and ...increasingly bureaucratized processes. Based on exhaustive historical research, this work traces how public and private power merged to favor a distinctive economic model that places insurance companies at the center of the system, where they both finance and oversee medical care. Although the insurance company model was created during the 1930s, it continues to drive health care cost and quality problems today. This wide-ranging work not only evaluates the overarching political and economic framework of the medical system but also provides rich narrative detail, examining the political dramas, corporate maneuverings, and forceful personalities that created American health care as we know it. This book breaks new ground in the fields of health care history, organizational studies, and American political economy.
Life in crisis Redfield, Peter
2013., 20130126, 2013, 2013-02-25
eBook
Life in Crisis tells the story of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders or MSF) and its effort to "save lives" on a global scale. Begun in 1971 as a French alternative to the Red Cross, ...the MSF has grown into an international institution with a reputation for outspoken protest as well as technical efficiency. It has also expanded beyond emergency response, providing for a wider range of endeavors, including AIDS care. Yet its seemingly simple ethical goal proves deeply complex in practice. MSF continually faces the problem of defining its own limits. Its minimalist form of care recalls the promise of state welfare, but without political resolution or a sense of well-being beyond health and survival. Lacking utopian certainty, the group struggles when the moral clarity of crisis fades. Nevertheless, it continues to take action and innovate. Its organizational history illustrates both the logic and the tensions of casting humanitarian medicine into a leading role in international affairs.
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