“Impact of the Flu Shot”

I. What is the most striking change in the practice of medicine in the past hundred years? Fifty years? Five years?
II. How has the practice of medicine been affected by commercialism?
a. Role of insurance companies?
b. Role of HMOs?
c. Role of drug companies?
d. Effect of commercialism on medical research?
1) Controversy involving uses of replacement hormones for post-menopausal women—see pages 165-66 in The Disability Rights Movement?
2) Controversy over impact of Vioxx and other anti-inflammatory and pain medication drugs?
3) Are drug companies that profit from sale of drugs doing the testing? If so, how does this affect the results of the tests?
4) Has the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ever been compromised in its role as monitors of drugs?
III. How did people with AIDS, themselves, pressure the FDA and the National Institutes of Health to find drugs that would transform the disease from a fatal one to a chronic one? See The Disability Rights Movement, pages 166-168.
a. How does the high cost of AIDS drugs affect treatment?
b. What has been done about such cost? What more can be done?
c. How should the United States and other nations deal with AIDS as a world-wide pandemic?
IV. Why were about 50 million people in the richest country in the world (USA) lacking health insurance before the 2010 Affordable Care Act?
Why were even many of those who were insured, underinsured?
How has this 2010 Affordable Care Act impacted the issues involved in the prior two questions?
a. Why can other developed nations deliver effective health care more universally and less expensively and with better outcomes than the United States can?
b. How does connecting health care to one’s employment affect delivery of health care services?
c. Why is there an overuse of emergency room care in U.S. hospitals?
d. Why does the U.S. rank relatively low with regard to the health care of its citizens (morbidity and mortality rates, as well as life expectancy) and infant mortality in comparison to other developed nations? (See the World Health Organization ranking of the U.S.)
e. Why are Medicare and Medicaid important to so many Americans? See The Disability Rights Movement pages 125-131. How has the 2010 Affordable Care Act affected the Medicare and Medicaid programs? Why have some states accepted the federal expansion of the Medicaid program while other states have not? What has been the effect of this difference?
V. Why have prisons become the hospitals for many people with psychiatric disabilities? See The Disability Rights Movement pgs. 117-118. How can this situation be improved?
VI. Why has the medical care provided by the Veterans Administration been considered inadequate? What positive changes have been made in the Obama administration? What about the care of those with psychiatric disabilities (Post-traumatic stress disorder)? Why the shocking number of suicides (22 per day) of veterans of the most recent military conflicts? Why the severity of the disabilities of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan (psychiatric disabilities, traumatic brain injury, multiple amputations)?
VII. Why the increase in specific disabilities as, for example, various forms of autism and asthma in children and diabetes in the general population? Are we addressing these concerns adequately?
VIII. Why the great number of mistakes in hospitals with regard to serious issues such as medication and surgery? What improvements have been made with respect to this issue?
IX. What role can people in the medical profession play to improve health care in the United States?
X. What role can people outside of the medical profession play as responsible citizens to improve health care in the United States?
XI. How has the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“Obamacare”) changed health care in the United States? How is it likely to change health care in the United States in the future? How would the inclusion of a “Public Option” improve this Act? What are the concerns regarding how the Trump administration has impacted and will continue to impact the Affordable Care Act?
XII. What recommendations have been provided by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) with respect to contagious diseases? How has misinformation regarding the efficacy and safety of vaccines caused a serious problem in the US?