Julia is an American medical doctor fleeing her own privileged background to find a new life delivering health care to African villages, where her skills can make a difference. Carl is also an American, whose very different experiences as a black man in the United States have driven him into exile in West Africa, where he is an international NGO expat. The two come together as colleagues (and then more) as Liberia is gripped in a brutal civil war. Child soldiers kidnap Julia on a remote jungle road, and Carl is evacuated against his will by U.S. Marines. Back in the United States he finds Juli... View More...
The U.S. does not have a health system. Instead we have market for health-related goods and services, a market in which the few profit from the public’s ill-health.Health Care Revolt looks around the world for examples of health care systems that are effective and affordable, pictures such a system for the U.S., and creates a practical playbook for a political revolution in health care that will allow the nation to protect health while strengthening democracy.Dr. Fine writes with the wisdom of a clinician, the savvy of a state public health commissioner, the precision of a scholar, and t... View More...
In this strident, necessary, meticulously researched book Michael Fine uses the COVID-19 pandemic and many other examples to show the costly failure of the American health care system in bold relief. Hospitals, insurance companies, Big Pharma, specialists, and even primary care doctors have all become tools of the new health profiteers. On Medicine as Colonialism shows how the American health care system cannibalizes communities in the US and around the world. Focusing on how health care profiteers co-opt the state's regulatory power, Medicare, and Medicaid to extract resources from communitie... View More...