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Posts tagged as “health care”

T’was A Famous Victory

“Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.” So wrote Pascal, remembering how Caesar and Mark Anthony, those mighty generals of the Roman Empire, were captivated by…

Abortions For Some, Government-Mandated Enemas For Others

I celebrated the passage of the health care reform bill by going to see a movie about the Republican vision for health care. “Repo Men,” starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker, portrays a dystopian future…

Letters to the Editor

Advice for Sunkett, Duggles on V'Canto v. Green Door, Nader on health care and much more...

Dispatches From The Emergency Room

I spent my early childhood in a trailer park in Texas so, until I became an emergency physician in Oakland, I thought I knew something about barriers to healthcare access, and maybe even something about poverty. The Emergency Department at the Oakland county hospital has around 75,000 visits a year — say, 200 a day. It has 43 beds; because of overcrowding, there are ‘extra’ patient beds in the hallways, which have ended up being designated as official patient-care areas: first came Hallway 1, then, a year later, Hallway 2, and now Hallway 3 as well. At night the ED usually has one supervising physician with a couple of housestaff — trainee doctors — a student or two, and around ten nurses; there is double supervising cover­age from the late morning through to about 2 AM, the hours of heaviest traffic.

Off the Record 1/6/2010

THIS POOR GUY, a walking advertisement for single payer health coverage, was booked into the Mendocino County Jail a few days ago for missing probation appointments, probably because he couldn't lift his tumor off his pillow.…

Letters to the Editor 12/30/2009

Almost of a year ago, I wrote an editorial for the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat in which I called on Barack Obama to be the hero the country so sorely needed (“We Need a Hero,” SRPD, 1/18/09).

Bernie the Quitter Fools Us Again

Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders spoke for months about his “historic” efforts to get a vote on a single-payer health care bill in the Senate. While we all knew the outcome was going to be a…

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