• Why Sanjay Gupta is the wrong man for the Top US health job

    Published by Counterpunch, February 9th 2009

    President Obama has put forward the name of Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the well-known chief medical correspondent for CNN, for the position of surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service – the chief public health officer of the federal government. Dr. Gupta has received wide acclaim as the most important voice on medical matters in the U.S. broadcasting industry. And CNN has played an important role in developing and promulgating the U.S. establishment’s conventional wisdom on what is happening in the country’s medical care. Dr. Gupta has been a major force in the promotion of that wisdom. (more…)

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  • Obama’s mistakes in the health care reform

    Published by Counterpunch, September 7th 2009

    Why Obama Needed Single Payer on the Table

    Let me start by saying that I have never been a fan of Barack Obama. Early on, I warned many on the left that his slogan, “Yes, we can,” could not be read as a commitment to the major change this country needs (see “Yes, We Can. Can We? The Next Failure of Health Reform”). (more…)

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  • Letter to the Editor, The American Prospect

    Letter to the Editor, The American Prospect

    Ezra Klein’s article “Wealth-Care Reform” (June 09) puts forward some positions that need to be questioned. Citing Michael McGinnis’s article in Health Affairs, Klein concludes that genetic predisposition accounts for 30% of a person’s health; social circumstances, 15%; environmental exposures, 5%; behavioral patterns, 40%; and shortfalls in medical care, 10%. In summary, if the genes you inherit from your parents are good, and if you eat properly, drink in moderation, do physical exercise, and do all the other things that health behavorists tell you to do, you are already in control of 70% of your health and longevity. The type of work you do, the type of place where you live, and the income you earn – among other economic and social circumstances – and the medical care you receive (or don’t receive) account for the remaining 30%. (more…)

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  • What we mean by social determinants of health

    Published by Global Health Promotion, March 2009

    See in PDF

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  • Area deprivation and trends in inequalities in self-rated health in Spain, 1987-2001

    Original article by Antonio Daponte Codina, Julia Bolívar Muñoz, Silvia Toro Cárdena, Ricardo Ocaña Riola, Joan Benach Rovira and Vicente Navarro López

    Published in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 2008

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  • The Politics of health care reforms in U.S. presidential elections. The deficits of U.S. democracy and the implications for health and social policy. By Vicente Navarro

    Published by International Journal of Health Services, Volume 38, Number 4, Pages 597-606, 2008. December 2008

    This article analyzes why people in the United States have major problems in accessing medical care that are due to financial constraints. The author suggests that the cause of these problems is the way in which medical care and elections are funded in the United States, with private sources being the largest component in the funding of both activities. The article includes a comparison of funding of the electoral process in the United States with similar electoral processes in the countries of the European Union, and postulates that privatization of the funding of U.S. elections (primary and general) is responsible for privatization of the funding of medical care—the root of people’s problem in paying for their medical care. Privatization of election funding gives undue power to the economic, financial, and professional groups that dominate medicine in the United States. (more…)

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