Medicine and Markets

A People's Health System: Venezuela Works to Bring Healthcare to the Excluded

By Peter Maybarduke

Caracas, Venezuela — “Much of our health problem has to do not so much with economic factors as with the organization of communities,” explains Luis Montiel Araujo, a physician with Venezuela’s Ministry of Health and Social Development (MSDS). “Barrio Adentro was conceived as a way to bring medical services to the excluded, ... to put a physician in every community.”

Barrio Adentro. It is nearly impossible to travel Venezuela without hearing reference to the government’s highly popular and controversial healthcare initiative that invites Cuban doctors to treat, train and live with working-class Venezuelans in communities across the country. MORE>>

Nursing Power: California Nurses' Collective Advocacy for Patients and Nurses

An interview with Rose Ann DeMoro

Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of the California Nurses Association, the largest and fastest-growing professional association and union for registered nurses in the country. CNA membership has doubled in the past seven years. CNA today represents over 57,000 RNs in 164 facilities across California. With CNA, California nurses have led the nation in ground-breaking patient advocacy legislation such as staffing ratios and whistle-blower protections. Modern Healthcare, an industry trade publication, in 2004 ranked DeMoro the thirty-fifth most powerful person in healthcare in the United States. MORE>>

Physicians' Rx for an Ailing Healthcare System

An Interview with Claudia Fegan

Claudia Fegan is president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), which advocates a universal, comprehensive Single-Payer National Health Program. PNHP has more than 10,000 members and chapters across the United States. Fegan is the medical director of outpatient care at Provident Hospital on the South Side of Chicago. She is a co-author of Universal Healthcare: What the United States Can Learn from Canada (New Press, 2001). MORE>>