1 1 The Politics of LGBT Health Kellan E. Baker Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale. Medicine as a social science, as the science of human beings, has the obligation to point out problems and to attempt their theoretical solution the politician, the practical anthropologist, must find the means for their actual solution. —Dr. Rudolf Virchow (quoted in Friedlander, n.d.) Policy is about visions, strategies, and decisions: it is a vehicle to turn knowledge into action and solutions. As the National Academy of Medi- cine asserts in each of its reports, “Knowing is not enough we must apply. Willing is not enough we must do.” This transformation of ideas into activity is what gives policy its power to affect the characteristics and daily functioning of societies, communities, and individual people. Policy operates at a number of different levels, from international treat- ies to protocols within a single organization. Important actors in Amer- ican health policy include the federal executive branch of government, Congress, and the judiciary state and territorial legislatures and guberna- torial administrations tribal governments municipal, county, and other local government systems international entities such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and stakeholders such as hospitals, insurance com- panies, health care providers, advocates, and patients. This chapter focuses
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