To Live and Die in America

Ian Hudson, Robert Chernomas

Description

Reviled as one of the worst healthcare providers in the world, the United States has among the worst indicators of health in the industrialised world, whilst paradoxically spending significantly more on its health care system than any other industrial nation.



Economists Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson explain this contradictory phenomenon as the product of the unique brand of capitalism that has developed in the US. It is this particular form of capitalism that analogously created social and economic conditions that influence health, such as, highly industrialised labour that produced chronic disease amongst the labouring classes, alongside an inefficient, unpopular and inaccessible health care system that is incapable of dealing with those same patients. In order to improve health in America, the authors argue that a change is required in the conditions in the capitalist system in which people live and work, as well as a restructured health care system.
1. Class, Power, Health and Healthcare

2. The Medical Miracle?

3. To Live and Die in 19th Century America: A Class Based Explanation of the Rise and Fall of Infectious Disease

4. Death in Our Times: The Exceptional Class Context for Chronic Disease in America

5. The Political Economy of US Healthcare: The Medical Industrial Complex

6. Three Easy Lessons

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Public Policy
• Public Affairs
• Political Science
• Public administration
• Administration

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 06 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781849648431
• Langue: English

Extrait

TO LIVE AND DIE IN AMERICA
The Future of World Capitalism
Series editors: Radhika Desai and Alan Freeman
The world is undergoing a major realignment. The 2008 financial crash and ensuing recession, China’s unremitting economic advance, and the uprisings in the Middle East, are laying to rest all dreams of an ‘American Century’. This key moment in history makes weighty intellectual demands on all who wish to understand and shape the future.
Theoretical debate has been derailed, and critical thinking stifled, by apologetic and superficial ideas with almost no explanatory value, ‘globalization’ being only the best known. Academic political economy has failed to anticipate the key events now shaping the world, and offers few useful insights on how to react to them.
The Future of World Capitalism series will foster intellectual renewal, restoring the radical heritage that gave us the international labour movement, the women’s movement, classical Marxism, and the great revolutions of the twentieth century. It will unite them with new thinking inspired by modern struggles for civil rights, social justice, sustainability, and peace, giving theoretical expression to the voices of change of the twenty-first century.
Drawing on an international set of authors, and a world-wide readership, combining rigour with accessibility and relevance, this series will set a reference standard for critical publishing.
Also available:
Geopolitical Economy:
After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire
Radhika Desai
The Birth of Capitalism:
A Twenty-First-Century Perspective
Henry Heller
Remaking Scarcity:
From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy
Costas Panayotakis

First published 2013 by Pluto Press, 45 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Published in Canada by Fernwood Publishing, 32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point, Nova Scotia, B0J 1B0 and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3G 0X3 www.fernwoodpublishing.ca
Fernwood Publishing Company Limited gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage, the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism under the Manitoba Publishers Marketing Assistance Program and the Province of Manitoba, through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, for our publishing program.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Chernomas, Robert
To live and die in America : class, power, health and health care / Robert Chernomas, Ian Hudson. (The future of world capitalism) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-55266-561-9
1. Medical economics--United States. 2. Medical care--United States. 3. Health status indicators--United States. 4. Social classes--Health aspects--United States. 5. United States--Economic conditions--21st century. 6. United States--Social conditions--21st century. I. Hudson, Ian, 1967- II. Title. III. Series: Future of world capitalism (Winnipeg, Man.) RA410.53.C54 2013 362.10973 C2012-906999-X
Copyright © Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson 2013
The right of Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3217 8 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3212 3 Paperback ISBN 978 1 55266 561 9 (Fernwood) ISBN 978 1 8496 4842 4 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 8496 4844 8 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 8496 4843 1 EPUB eBook
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Curran Publishing Services, Norwich Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America
For my brother Fred. He would have understood; he always did.
RC

For Brett and Mark, best brothers ever.
IH
CONTENTS


List of figures and tables
Acknowledgments
1 Class, power, health, and healthcare
Introduction
Competing theories of health outcomes
The rest of the book
2 The medical miracle?
Illness under early industrialization in the United States and the United Kingdom
Modern illness
The medical diagnosis
The corporate influence on medical science
Conclusion
3 To live and die in the nineteenth-century United States: a class-based explanation of the rise and fall of infectious disease
The casual holocaust
The context for infectious disease in the United Kingdom: overworked, underpaid, overcrowded, and insanitary


Poverty and insecurity
Environmental conditions
The UK transition
The context for infectious disease in the United States: overworked, underpaid, overcrowded, and insanitary


Poverty and insecurity
Conditions of work
Environmental conditions
Employers and the state confront unions over the social determinants of health
The US transformation


Poverty and inequality
Conditions of work
Living conditions: housing, sanitation, and public health
Conclusion
4 Death in our times: the exceptional class context for chronic disease in the United States
Food
Environment
Work


Stress at work
Unemployment and insecurity
Occupational illness
Inequality
The recent US political economy: a turn for the worse


Regulation
Declining funding
Trade agreements as a social determinant of health
Industry influence on regulations
Labor market changes
Conclusion
5 The political economy of US healthcare: the medical industrial complex
Class interests: the evolution of the medical industrial complex


The early years: the AMA
Modern America: insurance and corporate medicine
The results of the dominance of the MIC


The insurance industry
For-profit hospitals and healthcare services
The pharmaceutical industry
Profits in the MIC
Economics in support of the MIC
Predictable: Obama’s healthcare plan
Conclusion
6 Three easy lessons
Safety first: the REACH program
Equality, economic growth, and health
Universal, single-payer, public health insurance in Canada
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
FIGURES AND TABLES
FIGURES


2.1 Causes of death in England and Wales, 1851–60
2.2 Leading causes of death in the United States, 1900
2.3 Life expectancy at birth in the United Kingdom and United States, 1750 to 1900
2.4 The Preston curve: life expectancy versus GDP per capita, 2000
2.5 Fall in mortality from infectious diseases before and after introduction of treatment measures, England and Wales, 1901 to 1971
2.6 Decline in infectious diseases in the United States, 1900 to 1960
2.7 Causes of deaths for males and females in the United Kingdom, 2003
2.8 Leading causes of death in the United States, 2004
2.9 Expected age at death, England and Wales, 1751 to 1990
2.10 Age-specific mortality in the United States, 1900 to 2000
3.1 Average real wages and productivity levels in the United States, 1960 to 2000 (average earnings in 2001 dollars, nonsupervisory private sector)
3.2 Weekly hours of work in US manufacturing
4.1 Percentage of neighborhoods with negative environmental conditions* by income decile, United Kingdom, 2010
4.2 Relationship betweem neighborhood socioeconomic decile and life expectancy at birth in the United States, 1980–82 and 1998–2000
4.3 Percentage of total income earned by quintile, United States, 1967 to 2007
4.4 Gini coefficient, selected countries, 2011
4.5 Income inequality and infant mortality in 23 developed nations
4.6 US unionization rate, percentage of nonagricultural wage and salary employees who are covered by collecting bargaining, 1964–2010
5.1 General medical practitioners’ pay in selected countries
TABLES


3.1 Mortality rate per 1,000 of population, selected major UK industrial cities
4.1 Dangers associated with workplace exposure to high-volume carcinogens
5.1 Establishment of major trade union federations, socialist parties and first social (including health) insurance: selected European countries
5.2 Profit rank of the top 3 MIC industries (out of 51 industries in the United States)
6.1 Gini coefficients before and after taxes and transfers: total population
6.2 Gini coefficients of household net worth, early 2000s
6.3 Poverty rates before and after taxes and transfers: total population
6.4 Unionization rates
6.5 Ranking on selected social determinants of health among developed nations
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In writing this book we have been very fortunate to have benefited from the supportive people at Pluto Press. We owe a particular debt to Radhika Desai, co-editor of the Future of World Capitalism series, who went through both a fairly preliminary version and a much more polished draft with what could only be described as a fine toothcomb. Her thoughtful suggestions and insightful questions led to a much-improved version of the manuscript. The other co-editor, Alan Freeman, with the able assistance of Susan Dianne Brophy, has been particularly energetic on the publicity front, in an effort to ensure that this book actually gets read by more than a few people.
There have been a host of people at Pluto that have helped, in one important way or another, in getting the manuscript into actual finished book form. Our copy editor, Susan Curran, managed the impressive task of carefully eliminating our grammatical errors. Roger van Zwanenberg, David Shulman, Robert Webb, Jonath