“Circles of Exclusion: The Politics of Health Care in Israel”
By Dani Filc, M.D., with a foreword by Quentin Young, M.D.
Cornell University Press, 2009
Hardcover, 208 pp., $35
Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, has written a foreword to a new book by Dr. Dani Filc of Israel.
Young writes (excerpt):
“As I sat down to read Dani Filc’s ‘Circles of Exclusion,’ I expected to learn a great deal about the Israeli health care system. What I did not expect was to find that this tiny country enmeshed in a seemingly intractable conflict in the Middle East would have so many lessons for the world’s most powerful nation – the United States.
“Several pages into this courageous book, it became clear that the issues Dr. Filc describes hold great relevance for those grappling with America’s ongoing health care crisis. The crisis in Israel and that in the United States are the result of the impact of neoliberal market policies that are currently being imposed on health care throughout the globe.
“In both countries we see a decline in concern and funding for public health and the exclusion of the poor racial and ethnic minorities from increasingly privatized health care systems in which the survival of profit-making enterprises seems to be the paramount concern. …
“For a public health advocate like myself, the message of this book is crystal clear. Obsessive preoccupation with free-market formulas are intensifying social and health care problems in industrialized countries, not resolving them. Of course, Filc shows us how this has happened is Israel, which because of its history puts a very specific spin on the problems of the poor, the old, racial and ethnic minorities, and the new migrant working class that crisscrosses the globe. Nonetheless, in Israel and elsewhere, preoccupations with profit are crowding out concerns for the classical social determinants of health and, as Dr. Filc points out over and over again, are not saving money but actually wasting it.”
The editors at Cornell University Press write:
“In its early years, Israel’s dominant ideology led to public provision of health care for all Jewish citizens-regardless of their age, income, or ability to pay. However, the system has shifted in recent decades, becoming increasingly privatized and market-based. In a familiar paradox, the wealthy, the young, and the healthy have relatively easy access to health care, and the poor, the old, and the very sick confront increasing obstacles to medical treatment.
“In ‘Circles of Exclusion,’ Dani Filc, both a physician and a human rights activist, forcefully argues that in present-day Israel, equal access to health care is constantly and systematically thwarted by a regime that does not extend an equal level of commitment to the well-being of all residents of Israel, whether Jewish, Israeli Palestinians, migrant workers, or Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
“Filc explores how Israel’s adoption of a neoliberal model has pushed the system in a direction that gives priority to the strongest and richest individuals and groups over the needs of society as a whole, and to profit and competition over care. Filc pays special attention to the repercussions of policies that define citizenship in a way that has serious consequences for the health of groups of Palestinians who are Israeli citizens — particularly the Bedouins in the unrecognized villages — and to the ways in which this structure of citizenship affects the health of migrant workers.
“The health care situation is even more dire in the Occupied Territories, where the Occupation, especially in the last two decades, has negatively affected access to medical care and the health of Palestinians. Filc concludes his book with a discussion of how human rights, public health, and economic imperatives can be combined to produce a truly equal health care system that provides high-quality services to all Israelis.”