Health and Healing in America

April 2 – Poster and Presentation “Conference Day” on your Disease Projects

Video we watched in class:

April 9 – (virtual class) Supremacy, and Hubris? Reading: Rutkow Ch 8-10. Disease Report is due (please email it). For a brief time in the mid-20th century, things looked very promising for the eradication of major transmissible diseases and for steady progress on extending the human lifespan. Science and medicine seemed to have triumphed over ignorance and disease. Were we fooling ourselves?? See, for example:

A (hilariously campy) British government 1964 film looking back on the 1940s discovery of penicillin and Jack Gibbon’s heart-lung machine in action (BBC Four)

April 16 – (virtual class) The American System (pre-Obamacare). Viewing: screen the 2007 film Sicko in its entirety (allow 2 hours), and read Stevens, “Health Care and Policy in the US” (PDF).
Journal Prompt #6. By class time on Wednesday, April 16, please post a 500-word journal response on Blackboard answering why there was so much resistance to a national health care system in the US, when it was adopted in so many other developed nations in the 20th century? Also, by the 2000s, what were the major failings of the health care system as highlighted by Michael Moore in his film? What did he think needed to be fixed? What accounts for the sense of urgency in Sicko?

April 23 (virtual class) Health Care System and Costs. Reading/listening/viewing: Read “Why is American Health Care So Ridiculously Expensive” in The Atlantic of March 2013 (and check out a few of the graphs that are linked to in the story), and also listen to / take notes on the 1-hour “More is Less” episode of the public radio program This American Life, which originally aired in October 2009. You might also appreciate October’s cover story in MIT Technology Review, “A Tale of Two Drugs.” And watch these two overviews of the American health care system:

Journal Prompt #7. By class time on Wednesday, April 23, please post a 500-word journal response about the current — and coming — changes in the US health care system. How does this look from your perspective as a health care provider?

Our last class will be a debate in person on April 30th, and preparing for the final exam. The instructions and resources are now posted under the “Debate” tab, above.