Despite ideological attacks and under-funding, the Veterans Health Administration is a model public system.
Suzanne Gordon
Suzanne Gordon is a senior policy analyst at the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, as well as a journalist and co-editor of a Cornell University Press series on health care work and policy issues. Her latest book, co-authored with Steve Early and Jasper Craven, is Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends, and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs (Duke University Press). She has won a Special Recognition Award from Disabled American Veterans for her writing on veterans’ health issues, much of which has appeared in The American Prospect. Her website is www.suzannegordon.com.
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Families on Call
There are 25.8 million family caregivers in America today. According to a recent study by the United Hospital Fund of New York, they provide the equivalent of nearly $200 billion worth of health care services per year. That’s almost double the annual amount the United States spends on nursing home and home health care. Yet […]
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Nurse, Interrupted
It’s May 13, the day after Florence Nightingale’s birthday, and as part of the annual celebration of Nurses’ Week–established in part to commemorate Nightingale’s role in the development of professional nursing–members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association have asked me to speak to a group of registered nurses (RNs) at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Health […]
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It’s All in Her Head
PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine, by Sally Satel, M.D. Basic Books, 256 pages, $27.00. Are you concerned about the fact that 44 million Americans lack healthinsurance and that millions of senior citizens are struggling to pay for medicineprescribed by their doctors? Are you troubled by the denial of necessary care byHMOs–or by […]
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Doc Hollywood
Physicians have always had a symbiotic relationship with Hollywood. From Lew Ayres in the 1930s Dr. Kildare films to Andre Braugher in Gideon’s Crossing and Melina Kanakaredes in Providence, movie studios and TV networks have enlisted the support of individual doctors and their organizations to provide story ideas, expert advice, and, more recently, high-tech medical […]
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
Feminism and Caregiving
Career-minded feminists intent on devaluing caregiving should instead be doing its opposite—increasing its currency among men and women.