Altman part 1

Altman began the book by telling about his personal dilemma of deciding on whether or not to put his 96 year old mother through triple bypass heart surgery.  He did this to introduce the problems with American healthcare. He personally faced a decision on whether to put his fragile mother through a possibly life threatening procedure or to let her die naturally.  He said cost was not a central issue in his problem despite the fact that it is among the most prominent problems in the American system.  The rest of the section was devoted to thoroughly describing the attempts of the Nixon and the Clinton administration to improve the american healthcare system.  In Altman's description of the Nixon attempts he mentions the emergence of the HMO idea.  I found his description of HMO's interesting because before reading I had only heard of the name.  I feel the HMO model is a good concept for governmental cost control in its set salaries for doctors; however i also feel that this practice could harm the quality of care that doctors give by decreasing the incentive for quality care and also decreasing the incentive for student to become doctors.  

Altman also described the attempts of the Clinton administration and I was surprised at how fiscally centered many of his plans were. Due to party stereotypes, I would have assumed the Clinton administration would have been less fiscally responsible. At the end of this section Altman described earlier attempts at universal health care by the bolsheviks, and by FDR (which we read about in the last book).  I found it interesting to see how the issue evolved both inside and outside the US.  

 

Paper topic

My initial topic idea is to write on the conflict between the AMA and the proposal of Medicare.  I have also been thinking about writing on the Americans with disabilities act and the problems and benefits it brought about.

Hoffman 6-end

The end of this book really illustrated the confusing perspectives that were forced upon americans.  Beginning with the the proposal of Medicare, propaganda and other solely political methods were used to sway the public's votes. It shows how politically loaded healthcare became and how party loyalty most likely affected people's opinions, as seen in the failure of Clinton's health reform. This section also put emphasis on the struggle of African Americans during the early phases of health care reform.  I found it interesting that the proposal of Medicare came right around the same time as the Civil Rights Movement.  It seems the 50-60's were a hot bed for social activism.