Division Dispatches
The Division Dispatches are brief opinion pieces focused on bioethical issues from diverse, multi-disciplinary perspectives that can enrich our collective understanding of critical questions in the field. An archive appears below of past Dispatches:
Income Inequality and Health Disparities: What Money Can't Buy - Caitlin McMahon, PhD, MPH
"A recent headline in the American Public Health Association publication, The Nation's Health, reads, 'US census: Income inequality rapidly increasing, putting health at risk.' The news is troubling both for what it portends and the sense of recognition of a dreadful and stubbornly static narrative. As a historian of public health, I was reminded of a poem by E. L. Foster published in 1917 entitled 'The Payee,' which skewered in blunt language the crushing burden of the costs of living and even dying. Noting the rising health care prices charged by doctors for 'bein' born' or even 'layin' cold and still,' Foster concludes that, without fail, the costs are passed along and 'The Consumer, patient sucker, pays the bill...'"