Week 1 Discussion - An American Sickness

Week 1 Discussion

An American Sickness

How Healthcare Became Big Business And How You Can Take It Back, by Elisabeth Rosenthal, source: npr.org

BACKGROUND:

It is well documented that our healthcare system has grave problems, but how, in only a matter of decades, did things get this bad?  Rosenthal spells out in clear and practical terms exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship, explaining step by step the workings of a profession sorely lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate a byzantine system and also to demand far-reaching reform. Breaking down the monolithic business into its individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal tells the story of the history of American medicine as never before. The situation is far worse than we think, and it has become like that much more recently than we realize. Hospitals, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Americans are dying from routine medical conditions when affordable and straightforward solutions exist. Dr. Rosenthal explains for the first time how various social and financial incentives have encouraged a disastrous and immoral system to spring up organically in a shockingly short span of time. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.   

TASKS :  Here are this week's questions for you:  

The above is a summary of a book by Dr. Rosenthal.  You do not have to buy the book.  Use the summary to get you started to think about the topic of the week.

1) What are three major problems in the medical care in the US according to Dr. Rosenthal?   Add one or two more issues that you noticed from your own experience, from your work, from your neighborhood,  or from the current events.  You may agree or disagree with Rosenthal, the author, and write your opinion while answering.

2) Outside of government itself, the largest industry in the United States is the health care industry. Over the past several decades, costs in the health care industry have been increasing at a much faster rate than the rate of inflation in general.  What are the reasons of this increasing healthcare cost?

3) The impact of Covid-19 is still around us globally and it placed harsh impacts on the society.  Choose  three out of the ten  economic principles we review this week, and link the three principles with the socio- economic impacts on yourself, neighborhood, and the society and describe each one of them in a few sentences.