Health Care Under the Knife: A Selected Bibliography

“I’ve still got my health so what do I care?” goes a lyric in an old Cole Porter song. Most of us, in fact, assume we can’t live full lives, or take on life’s challenges, without also assuming that we’re basically healthy and will be for the foreseeable future. But these days, our health and well-being are sorted through an ever-expanding, profit-seeking financial complex that monitors, controls, and commodifies our very existence. Given that our access to competent, affordable health care grows more precarious each day, the arrival of Health Care Under the Knife could not be more timely. In this empowering book, noted health-care professionals, scholars, and activists—including coordinator Howard Waitzkin—impart their inside knowledge of the medical system: what’s wrong, how it got this way, and what we can do to heal it. Howard will discuss Health Care Under the Knife on Thursday, 5/17, 6pm at the Co-op. He will be joined in conversation by Bill Ayers.

Medicine and Public Health at the End of Empire, by Howard Waitzkin - My most recent prior book that focuses on imperialism and health.

The Second Sickness: Contradictions of Capitalist Health Care, by Howard Waitzkin - An earlier book the led to some key emphases of Health Care Under the Knife.

The Politics of Medical Encounters: How Patients and Doctors Deal with Social Problems, by Howard Waitzkin - A major study of patient-doctor communication that shows how the relationship becomes distorted by elements of life under capitalism.

At the Front Lines of Medicine: How the Health Care System Alienates Doctors and Mistreats Patients...and What We Can Do about It, by Howard Waitzkin - A book that analyzed the early trends leading to the problems addressed in Health Care Under the Knife.

Private Profits Versus Public Policy: The Pharmaceutical Industry and the Canadian State, by Joel Lexchin - Written by Joel, who contributed the chapter on the pharmaceutical industry in Health Care Under the Knife.

Marriage of Convenience: Rockefeller International Health and Revolutionary Mexico, by Anne-Emanuelle Birn - A key work that led to the chapter on philanthrocapitalism in Health Care Under the Knife.

Comrades in Health: U.S. Health Internationalists, Abroad and at Home, edited by Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Theodore M. Brown - An important book that focuses on international solidarity in health, a key topic in Health Care Under the Knife.

To Heal Humankind: The Right to Health in History, by Adam Gaffney - A crucial recent book by a co-author of several chapters in Health Care Under the Knife.

Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science, by Rob Wallace - An important recent book by the co-author of the chapter on the social and environmental determinants of health in Health Care Under the Knife.

Vygotsky and Marx: Toward a Marxist Psychology, by Carl Ratner and Daniele Nunes Henrique Silva - An influential recent book by Carl Ratner, the author of the chapter on pathological normalcy and mental health in Health Care Under the Knife.

About Howard Waitzkin: Howard Waitzkin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of New Mexico and Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Illinois. His work has focused on health policy in comparative international perspective and on psychosocial issues in primary care. He has been active for years in the struggles for national health programs in the United States and Latin America. He is the author of Medicine and Public Health at the End of Empire, among other books.