The Sick System

The health system is sick, but still has chances to heal. Its economic alignment has not only led the doctor's profession into a 'business model' on a 'medical market', but it risks leading to an illogical, inhumane and unfair care system - without reaching the initial economic goals. Dr. Bernhard Stein, MD, anesthesiologist and health economics expert, shows the weaknesses of our current health care system and pleads for understanding the crisis as an opportunity for a fundamental reorientation: the transformation of the old-school hospital into a lean, modular and regionally networked unit. With the maxim - a maximum of outpatient care in this network, and synergy instead of competition. This bottom-up approach, changing the philosophy of care and made possible by new technologies, gives a new chance to disfavored and regionally isolated populations. They are the first victims of the current industrial model of "healthcare".

Families left grieving; small businesses shuttered; communities in lockdown; precarious workers set adrift; health care workers stressed beyond endurance. The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world to its core. But the cracks already ran deep. Featuring essays on poverty, health care, incarceration, basic income, policing, Indigenous communities, and more, this anthology delivers a stinging rebuke of the pre-pandemic status quo and a stark exposé of the buried weaknesses in our social and political systems. As policy makers scramble to bail out corporations and preserve an unsustainable labour market, an even greater global catastrophe – in the form of ecological collapse, economic recession, and runaway inequality – looms large on the horizon. What can we do? From professors to poets, the authors of Sick of the System speak in one voice: We can turn our backs on “normal.” We can demand divestment, redistribution, and mutual aid. We can seize new forms of solidarity with both hands. As the world holds its breath, revolutionary ideas have an unprecedented chance to gain ground. There should be no going back.

A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, 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. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out 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 and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.

"A stunning book—as passionate and honest in telling the stories of homeless women as it is incisive in analyzing the failures of homeless policies." - Thomas Homer-Dixon

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Sick Note shows how the question of 'who is really sick?' has never been straightforward and will continue to perplex the British state. Sick Note is a history of how the British state asked, 'who is really sick?' Tracing medical certification for absence from work from 1948 to 2010, Gareth Millward shows that doctors, employers, employees, politicians, media commentators, and citizens concerned themselves with measuring sickness. At various times, each understood that a signed note from a doctor was not enough to 'prove' whether someone was really sick. Yet, with no better alternative on offer, the sick note survived in practice and in the popular imagination - just like the welfare state itself. Sick Note reveals the interplay between medical, employment, and social security policy. The physical note became an integral part of working and living in Britain, while the term 'sick note' was often deployed rhetorically as a mocking nickname or symbol of Britain's economic and political troubles. Using government policy documents, popular media, internet archives, and contemporary research, Millward covers the evolution of medical certification and the welfare state since the Second World War, demonstrating how sickness and disability policies responded to demographic and economic changes - though not always satisfactorily for administrators or claimants. Moreover, despite the creation of 'the fit note' in 2010, the idea of 'the sick note' has remained. With the specific challenges posed by the global pandemic in the early 2020s, Sick Note shows how the question of 'who is really sick?' has never been straightforward and will continue to perplex the British state.

“Expecting Washington to fix healthcare is like waiting for cancer to cure cancer.” – Dr. Deane Waldman A cancer is devouring the U.S. healthcare system. Is there a cure? America: are you confused, scared … or mad as hell? Before you give up in disgust, read The Cancer in the American Healthcare System. You’ll discover: * Why health care is both less affordable and much less available… * Where all those trillions of “healthcare” dollars go… * Who the real bad guys are… * Why Obamacare can’t and won’t help you… *How to regain control over your own health care… Praise for multiple award-winning The Cancer in Healthcare (2012) “Easy, entertaining read, will make the Bad Guys squirm. Dr. Waldman’s style is lively and lucid, and the book is packed with facts. It is not just another boring recital of platitudes. His real life examples leave no doubt as to how absurd and sick the system is. …Read it an weep, laugh, or both.” – DR. JANE ORIENT, FORMER PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS “This book is easy … to understand, but does not lack real fact-based academic rigor. It is a fast fun read, that will help you get a better understanding of the issues with the healthcare system iin the United States. Five stars.” – S. POWER, AMAZON TOP 500 REVIEWER

Rule and resistance can no longer be understood in national contexts only. They both have transnationalised over the last decades. The scholarly discourse, however, still lags behind these developments. While International Relations only sees institutional “governance”, social movement studies only see instances of resistance. Both, however, lack the necessary vocabulary to describe the dynamic interplay between systems of rule and resistance. While we are governed by transnational structures of rule, a systematic analysis of how this operates and how it can be resisted remains to be developed. This book develops an understanding of these power relations through rich empirical case studies of different forms of rule-resistance relationships. Some resistant groups demand reforms of particular policies and institutions. Others attack institutions head-on. Yet other actors attempt to escape the rules they reject. Which forms of resistance can we expect under different kinds of rule? How can we understand transnational rule in the first place? The book gives new inspiring answers to these difficult questions.