Published in Harvard Health Policy Review. July 2008

The U.S. and European political cultures are very different

I appreciate the invitation from the Harvard Health Policy Review to discuss the relationship between national health care systems and the policy process. Continueu llegint »

A Counterpunch Special Report

Yes, We Can! Can We?

The Next Failure of Health Care Reform

By VINCENT NAVARRO

A major problem–if not the major problem–for many people living in the U.S. is the difficulty of accessing and paying for medical care when they are sick. For this reason, candidates in the presidential primaries of 2008–the Democrats more often than the Republicans–have been recounting stories about the health-related tragedies they have encountered in meetings with ordinary people around the country (an exercise conducted in the U.S. every four years, at presidential election time). Continueu llegint »

Published on Counterpunch, 2/13/08

I live on both sides of the Atlantic–part of the year in the where I was born. I had to leave Spain because of my active participation in the anti-fascist underground against the Franco dictatorship in the 1950s. I lived for a while in Sweden and Great Britain, and finally settled in the U.S.A., teaching (as I still do) at the Johns Hopkins University. I have been active in U.S. academic and political life for more than 35 years. I was senior advisor to Jesse Jackson Sr. during the Democratic Party primaries of 1984 and 1988. Continueu llegint »

The European Journal of Public Health Advance Access publicat el 4 de Juny de 2008

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Published on ww.counterpunch.org, Novembre 2007

In his article “The Hillarycare Mythology” (The American Prospect, October 2007, pp. 12-18), Paul Starr, a senior health policy advisor to President Bill Clinton and a leading figure in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s White House task force on health care reform, analyzes the origins, development, and final outcome of the Clinton administration’s health care reform–referred to by republicans as “Hillarycare.” Continueu llegint »

Published on www.counterpunch.org, Septembre 2007

According to conventional wisdom in Spain and in the U.S., in Spain’s transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy, it was King Juan Carlos, with the assistance of the U.S. government (first the Ford administration, then the Carter administration),
who brought democracy to Spain. In this interpretation of events taking place from 1975, when the dictator died, to 1978, when the first democratically elected government was installed, the U.S. government actively supported the development of democracy in Spain.
The reality, however, was very different. As documented in a recent book by Nicolas Sartorins and Alberto Sabio, El Final de la Dictadura (The End of the Dictatorship), the U.S. government was not very keen on having full democracy in Spain. The primary, if not exclusive, concern of the U.S. government in Spain was to preserve its military and economic interests. Democracy in Spain was the least of its concerns. Continueu llegint »