Authors:
- Provides a comprehensive history of the grassroots Movement for Health Care Reform in the United States from within the Single Payer Movement
- Discusses the role that narrative (constructions of opportunity) plays in grassroots mobilization, which builds on existing social movement theory
- Examines the turn against “politics as usual” and establishment politicians that began in progressive social movements long before the election of Donald Trump
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
The recent rise of “Medicare for All” in American political discourse was many years in the making. Behind this rise is a movement composed of grassroots activists and organizations that have been working for more than three decades to achieve the goal of establishing a single-payer healthcare system in the United States. In the past decade, the Single Payer Movement has grown and garnered more public and political support than ever before. This relative success cannot be attributed to any one political figure or political era. The story of how this happened, and how it is tied to a turn against establishment politics on both the left and right, as well as the rise of outsider politicians such as Senator Bernie Sanders, takes place during the Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. During each of these eras, activists experienced shifting opportunities that they interpreted through the telling of stories. These narratives of opportunity encouraged participationin particular forms of grassroots mobilization, which then affected the outcome of each era. This has had lasting effects on the development of healthcare policy in the United States. In this book, Hern conducts a political ethnographic analysis in which she uses historical records, interviews, and participant observation to tell the story of the Single Payer Movement, establish the lessons that can be learned from this history, and develop a framework—the Environment of Opportunity Model—that involves a holistic understanding of social movement activity through the analysis of narrative practice.
Keywords
- social movements
- health care reform
- Affordable Care Act
- ACA
- Obamacare
- Single Payer Health Care
- Narrative
- Opportunity
- Anti-Establishment Politics
- social organization
- progressive social change
- private health insurance
- activism
- grass-roots mobilization
- Bill Clinton
- G.W. Bush
- Barack Obama
- Environment of Opportunity Model
- Medicare for All
- Donald Trump
Reviews
—Gerald Friedman, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
“To date, no one has taken on the monumental task of documenting the healthcare justice movement in a thorough, comprehensive way. Yet Hern not only does so in her book, she also participates in the movement for single-payer, working for Medicare for All coverage for every person. Hern demonstrates her wide breadth of knowledge in her well-researched and well written book. Never before has the single-payer community of activists had such a rich accounting of the people who are driving the movement ever closer to theday when every person in America has access to truly high quality care without financial barriers.”
—Donna Smith, Advisory Board Chair and former Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America, former National Organizer for National Nurses United, and star of the Michael Moore film SiCKO
“Single-payer health care was kept on the nation’s agenda for decades by the organizing and the protests of thousands of dedicated citizen-activists. Lindy Hern’s inspiring analysis of the making of grass-roots history provides us with a democratic vision of America to last through troubled times.”
—Clarence Y. H. Lo, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Missouri, USA, and author of Small Property Versus Big Government: Social Origins of the Property Tax Revolt
Authors and Affiliations
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Department of Sociology, University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hilo, USA
Lindy S.F. Hern
About the author
Lindy S.F. Hern is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii, USA. In addition to studying the Single Payer Movement, Lindy has conducted projects on student retention, community responses to natural disaster, and roller derby. Lindy is a scholar-activist, primarily through her work for progressive health care reform.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Single Payer Healthcare Reform
Book Subtitle: Grassroots Mobilization and the Turn Against Establishment Politics in the Medicare for All Movement
Authors: Lindy S.F. Hern
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42764-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-42763-4Published: 11 June 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-42766-5Published: 11 June 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-42764-1Published: 10 June 2020
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 301
Number of Illustrations: 18 b/w illustrations, 7 illustrations in colour
Topics: Public Policy, US Politics, Governance and Government, Health Economics, Health Policy