Health-care Reform

A long-standing battle highlights a profession’s political transformation.

We’ve starved our public-health sector. The Costa Rica model demonstrates what happens when you put it first.

The story behind the Obama Administration’s most enduring—and most contested—legacy: reforming American health care.

At the peak of the pandemic in New York, residents at a multibillion-dollar hospital system asked for better working conditions. The ensuing debate highlighted the profession’s persistent inequities.

Medicine is a system for delivering care and support; it’s also a system of information, quality control, and lab science. All need fixing.

From The New Yorker’s archive: stories that illuminate the gaps in America’s national public-health infrastructure.

“Still, I’d feel a whole lot better if, first, we’d driven a wooden stake through its heart.”

It’s a question that divides Americans, including those from my home town. But it’s possible to find common ground.

“And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling Democrats, conservatives, moderates, the C.B.O. report, insurance companies, common decency . . .”

“Vultures—they must be voting on the health bill.”

“You’re in luck—you have a preëxisting condition. It preëxists Congress taking away your insurance.”

“Well, tell the Democrats that they’ll have to bring their own couch cushions if they want into the Secret Health-Care-Reform Commission Blanket Fort.”