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Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Gordon, Colin, 1962-

Title Dead on arrival : the politics of health care in twentieth-century America / Colin Gordon.

Publication Info. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [2003]
©2003

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xiii, 316 pages).
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Series Politics and society in twentieth-century America
Politics and society in twentieth-century America.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary Publisher's description: Why, alone among industrial democracies, does the United States not have national health insurance? While many books have addressed this question, Dead on Arrival is the first to do so based on original archival research for the full sweep of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of political, reform, business, and labor records, Colin Gordon traces a complex and interwoven story of political failure and private response. He examines, in turn, the emergence of private, work-based benefits the uniquely American pursuit of "social insurance" the influence of race and gender on the health care debate and the ongoing confrontation between reformers and powerful economic and health interests. Dead on Arrival stands alone in accounting for the failure of national or universal health policy from the early twentieth century to the present. As importantly, it also suggests how various interests (doctors, hospitals, patients, workers, employers, labor unions, medical reformers, and political parties) confronted the question of health care--as a private responsibility, as a job-based benefit, as a political obligation, and as a fundamental right. Using health care as a window onto the logic of American politics and American social provision, Gordon both deepens and informs the contemporary debate. Fluidly written and deftly argued, Dead on Arrival is thus not only a compelling history of the health care quandary but a fascinating exploration of the country's political economy and political culture through "the American century," of the role of private interests and private benefits in the shaping of social policy, and, ultimately, of the ways the American welfare state empowers but also imprisons its citizens.
Contents Introduction: Why no national health insurance in the United States? -- The political economy of American health care : an overview, 1910-2000 -- Bargaining for health : private health insurance and public policy -- Between contract and charity : health care and the dilemmas of social insurance -- Socialized medicine and other afflictions : the political culture of the health debate -- Health care in Black and white : race, region, and health politics -- Private interests and public policy : health care's corporate compromise -- Silenced majority : American politics and the dilemmas of health reform -- Conclusion: The past and future of health politics.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Medical policy -- United States.
Medical policy.
United States.
Medical care -- Political aspects -- United States.
Medical care -- Political aspects.
National Health Programs.
Health Care Reform.
Insurance, Health.
Politics.
United States.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Subject Medical care.
Other Form: Print version: Gordon, Colin, 1962- Dead on arrival. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©2003 0691058067 9780691058061 (DLC) 2002072257 (OCoLC)49891568
ISBN 9781400825677 (electronic book)
1400825679 (electronic book)