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 A refreshing approach to American Healeth Care Nov 18, 2007
As a former resident, I knew of the State of Hawaii's plans from the 1970's for healthcare. Washington State has looked at Hawaii's system, but was unable to pass significant legislation.
This book gives a wonderful history of how Hawaii's attitudes toward the health of workers evolved. Readers will enjoy the mingling of historical facts with the good will of what had to have been right wing sugar planters and other businessmen. Hawaii's leaders in the days of pine and cane understood that everyone must have access to quality healthcare. The other 49 states would do well to study, not just the present system, but the rich history of Hawaii labor and how the State got where it is today. The other 49 states should read this quick book and their legislatures look at "the right thing to do".
Healthcare Hawaii Style Sep 21, 2007
The invisible hand of the market might well be credited with many gratifying aspects of modern society, but it has clearly made an embarrassing mess of the way health care is delivered in this country. Nonetheless, efforts by reformers who advocate nothing more radical than basic compassion for one's fellow man are systematically thwarted by well financed campaigns of fear. People are made to fear losing their tenuous access to health care, and politicians are made to fear the stigma of "socialism." The press may applaud tiny gestures toward making health care a basic human right, but is quick to pledge allegiance to the dogma that it could never really happen here. Americans, according to this view, are brave enough to accept universal suffrage but too timid to risk universal relief of suffering.
But sometimes circumstances of history and geography can create experiments that prove conventional wisdom wrong. Dr. Frank Tabrah, in his book Healthcare Hawaii Style, shows us what can happen when courageous people are allowed to do what they know is right for one another. The Hawaiian Islands were settled by courageous people from all over the world; the timid would never have braved the trip. And once together, despite the widest disparities of language and ideologies, they had the nerve to put together a health care system that took care of everyone without financial penalty.
Fifty years ago it took a lot of guts to be a plantation doctor in one of the most remote places in the world. We are lucky that Dr. Tabrah still has the courage to lend his authoritative perspective to the most pressing problem in American medicine, and the energy to produce this invaluable historical document.
 Healthcare Hawaii Style Sep 17, 2007
The author leads us to a chronology of Western medicine's introduction to the Hawaiian Islands, alternating with memoirs of his 17 years as a sugar-plantation doctor in the 50s and 60s. That was a time of peace and tranquility, providing care to people who reaped the benefits of hard work and simple pleasures. He took advantage of his location to study professionally the efficacy of native-Hawaiian health practices and of the chemistry of local fauna and flora for current medicinal potential. The plants and animals, he points out, enjoyed Hawaii's notorious easy life, never threatened enough to develop those poisonous defenses that make promising medicines. It's a good read.
But the author would like the reader to go further and consider the old plantation system, in which generous employers, intelligent unions, supportive government (i.e. voters) and healthy behaviors combined to produce something deserving national attention. Could this be a model for the future? It's a good question.
The book has a comprehensive index, extensive bibliography and reverences, as well as illustrations and tabulations.
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