Crowdfunding As Socialized Healthcare

Charity, ostensibly a central moral and social American institution, is alive and flourishing–online, on crowdfunding sites, as thousands and thousands of perfect strangers and sometimes acquaintances and friends and family, line up to donate to the latest plea for help. (Perhaps someone needs a vital organ transplant, extended chemotherapy and radiation, or a new, life-savingContinue reading “Crowdfunding As Socialized Healthcare”

The Doctor And The Silenced Patient

In Confessions of a Medicine Man: An Essay in Popular Philosophy (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000, pp. 109-110) Alfred I. Tauber writes: Health care providers have to listen, respond, and generally account for the subjective experience of a patient’s complaint. So much of our discontent can be traced to the too little time the physician spendsContinue reading “The Doctor And The Silenced Patient”

Taylorism and the Doctor’s Office

From this vantage, distant point in my life, childhood meetings with doctors, whether at home–they still made house calls–or whether in the doctor’s clinic, appear as encounters with quasi-avuncular figures, benevolent, mostly-solicitous contacts with a wise, ostensibly caring person. I experienced my share of childhood illnesses, suffered from minor ailments, and almost always looked forwardContinue reading “Taylorism and the Doctor’s Office”