Kenneth Dowst:

An interview with Susan Rosenthal, M.D.

Curing Our Sick Health-Care System

Dr. Susan Rosenthal is a health-care-reform activist and a practicing physician, based in Ontario. Yep! even Canada is in need of radical health-care reform–to say nothing of us poor slobs south of the border, who can’t even get “single-payer.”

In a long phone conversation with me on July 2, Susan discussed North America’s bad public health, bad heath-care systems, the cause of both, and what we can do to improve things.

Her new book on these subjects is Sick and Sicker: Essays on Class, Health and Health Care.

So that the suspense doesn’t get unbearable (and further damage our health), I’ll reveal that, in Susan’s analysis, the cause of our bad health and bad health care is capitalism. Before you dismiss the idea as socialist propaganda, please listen to Susan’s brilliant and cogent argument about why this is the case and how it works.

In this first of two installments we discuss the root cause of much disease–social inequality–the practice of psychiatry, why depression and other disorders are so common (and so poorly treated), and why, each year, for-profit medicine kills 23 times as many Americans as criminal use of firearms.

Original program at: http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com/2010/07/susan-rosenthal-md-on-curing-our-sick.html