BOOKS by Howard Waitzkin
Social medicine and the coming transformation (2021)
This most recent publication offers compelling ways to understand and to change the social dimensions of health and health care.
Students, teachers, practitioners, activists, policy makers, and people concerned about health and health care will value this book, which goes beyond the usual approaches of texts in public health, medical sociology, health economics, and health policy.
Rinky-Dink Revolution: Moving Beyond Capitalism by Withholding Consent, Creative Constructions, and creative destructions (2020)
This pamphlet/manifesto tackles the question: how do we get from A to B, capitalism to post-capitalism? It is critical reading to understand why:
Capitalist-oriented industrial agriculture and its destruction of habitat are the upstream causes that led to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other past and future pandemics of devastating, emerging viral pathogens.
COVID-19 may trigger a collapse of the global capitalist system but it is not the cause.
Health-care and public-health systems organized around capitalist principles don’t do well in pandemics, compared to those not organized around capitalist principles.
The current economic collapse, triggered by a pandemic, opens a door for revolutionary transformation.
What’s next?
“The end of capitalism is possible. Waitzkin takes us a step further in the creative process for transformation. Through specific examples from organized groups within the United States and abroad, this work constitutes a practical guide for everyone. Waitzkin encourages our creativity for organized, safe acts and omissions to transcend capitalism.””
Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for our Health (2018)
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.
Noted health-care professionals, scholars, and activists with inside knowledge of the medical system explain what’s wrong, how it got this way, and what we can do to heal it.
Medicine and Public Health at the End of Empire (2011)
The financial meltdown has brought notable changes to the global practice of health care - changes that often have escaped the international news media.
While Western managed-care corporations previously had strengthened their influence abroad, now many countries are looking to new approaches in providing health care for their peoples.
“Health-care reform is a lively and contentious topic, but, as Waitzkin shows in this informative study, our debates on reform are too narrowly framed. His thoughtful analysis raises important questions about conventional assumptions of doctrine and practice, scrutinizing alternatives—among them notably the record of social medicine in Latin America.””
At the Frontlines of Medicine (2001)
This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the current problems of costs, coverage, and access to medical care in the United States. Waitzkin takes the reader into the examination room with vivid patient-doctor encounters that portray dilemmas patients frequently face.
Dr. Waitzkin describes how changes in medical care have affected the decision making of doctors, as well as communication between patients and doctors. He offers an analysis of how spiraling costs, managed care organizations, declining coverage, and new technologies have changed the decisions and the course of care chosen.
The Second Sickness: Contradictions of Capitalist Healthcare, 2nd ed. (2000)
Waitzkin's earlier edition used qualitative research to take readers inside the black box of medical decision making. This new, fully updated and expanded edition retains the earlier edition's vivid approach and adds timely analysis of how managed care and other economic and social forces influence medical practice today.
The Politics of Medical Encounters: How Patients and Doctors Deal with Social Problems (1991)
The complaints that patients bring to their doctors often have roots in social issues that involve work, family life, gender roles and sexuality, aging, substance use; or other problems of non-medical origin.
In this book, physician/sociologist Dr. Waitzkin examines interactions between patients and doctors to show how physicians’ focus on physical complaints often fails to address patients’ underlying concerns and also reinforces the societal problems that cause or aggravate these maladies. A progressive doctor-patient relationship, Waitzkin argues, fosters social change.
The Exploitation of Illness in Capitalist Society (1974)
In Dr. Waitzkin's first full length book, he explores the inherently exploitative characteristics associated with a for-profit healthcare system. His focus is on the capitalist system as a whole, which creates incentives that increase costs and reduce access to needed services.