Reshaping Social Policy

Chapter 20 discusses social policy changes necessary to effectively alleviate poverty in the United States. These include ensuring the availability of decent-paying jobs. Raising the minimum wage and raising the earned income tax credit are two approaches for increasing the wages of low-paying jobs. A second social policy initiative essential for reducing poverty is to provide an effective social safety net along with access to key social goods such as health care, affordable housing, and child care. Also discussed is the idea of a universal basic income. A final strategy discussed are policies that allow lower income households to build their economic assets.

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Medicaid

International Journal of Public and Private Healthcare Management and Economics ◽

10.4018/ijpphme.2012040102 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 17-37

Author(s):

Enrique M. Perez

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Health Care Cost ◽

State Level ◽

Safety Net ◽

The United States ◽

Policy Recommendations ◽

Social Safety Net ◽

Political Factors ◽

Medicaid Waivers

In the United States, Medicaid is the primary social safety net that provides health care for the poor and other vulnerable populations. Interest group theory and federalism, state level sovereignty, are used to create a theoretical model that proposes factors, other than increasing health care cost, as growth determinants of Medicaid expenditure and enrollments. For over three decades driven by federalism state-level discretionary Medicaid waiver programs have been creating new and unsustainable entitlements. The role of Medicaid waivers is poorly understood and in need of scholarly attention. Due to a lack of federal oversight and other social and political factors, some of which will be discussed in this paper, it appears that discretionary Medicaid waiver programs put in place as a solution are contributing to the overall structural issues of Medicaid. The paper concludes with suggestions on needed research and some potential policy recommendations.

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Getting By

10.1093/oso/9780190080860.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Helen Hershkoff ◽

Stephen Loffredo

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Health Care ◽

Public Schools ◽

Affordable Housing ◽

Low Income ◽

Safety Net ◽

The United States ◽

Labor Rights ◽

Speaking Up ◽

The Right

Over the last generation, inequality has risen, wages have fallen, and confidence that children will have a better future is at an all-time low. To be sure, a new generation is speaking up in support of universal health care, better public schools, affordable housing, and livable wages. But until the United States adopts and adheres to policies that ensure dignity and decency for all, people need to get by. This book addresses that imperative. Getting By offers an integrated, critical account of the programs, rights, and legal protections that most directly affect poor and low-income people in the United States, whether they are unemployed, underemployed, or employed, and whether they work within the home or outside the home. Although frayed and incomplete, the American safety net nevertheless is critical to those who can access and obtain its benefits—indeed, in some cases, those benefits can make the difference between life and death. The book covers cash assistance programs, employment and labor rights, food assistance, health care, housing programs, education, consumer and banking laws, rights in public spaces, judicial access, and the right to vote. The book primarily focuses on federal laws and programs, but in some contexts invites attention to state laws and programs. The rules and requirements are complicated, often unnecessarily so, and popular know-how is essential to prevent a widening gap between rights that exist on paper and their enforcement on the ground. The central goal of this volume is to provide a resource to individuals, groups, and communities that wish to claim existing rights and mobilize for progressive change.

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The Gospel of Reform: The Social Gospel and Health Care Reform Attitudes

Politics and Religion ◽

10.1017/s1755048317000797 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 364-395

Author(s):

Eric L. McDaniel ◽

Kenneth M. Miller

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Social Policy ◽

Health Care Reform ◽

Social Inequalities ◽

Safety Net ◽

Social Gospel ◽

Social Safety Net ◽

Policy Issues ◽

The Public ◽

The Social

AbstractMost research on the social gospel, a religious interpretation that obliges people to care for the less fortunate and correct social inequalities, has focused on elite rhetoric. However, it is not clear the extent to which members of the public also adhere to this socioreligious philosophy. The moralistic tone of the 2010 health care reform debate has led many to argue that there is a revival of the social gospel. To what extent has this debate gained traction among citizens writ large? Which individuals will be most likely to be influenced by elite discourse that draws social gospel? Using two unique surveys and an experiment, we demonstrate that Social Gospel adherents have distinctive political attitudes. Specifically, they are more attentive to social policy issues and are more supportive of expanding the social safety net. Second, we demonstrate that elite rhetoric that draws from the Social Gospel tradition can influence policy preferences.

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Critical Care in Critical Access Hospitals

Critical Care Nurse ◽

10.4037/ccn2015115 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 35 (5) ◽

pp. 62-67 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Teresa J. Seright ◽

Charlene A. Winters

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Critical Care ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Tertiary Care ◽

Safety Net ◽

The United States ◽

Infusion Therapy ◽

Critical Access Hospitals ◽

Hospital System ◽

Critical Access Hospital

What began as a grant-funded demonstration project, as a means of bridging the gap in rural health care, has developed into a critical access hospital system comprising 1328 facilities across 45 states. A critical access hospital is not just a safety net for health care in a rural community. Such hospitals may also provide specialized services such as same-day surgery, infusion therapy, and intensive care. For hospitals located near the required minimum of 35 miles from a tertiary care center, management of critically ill patients may be a matter of stabilization and transfer. Critical access hospitals in more rural areas are often much farther from tertiary care; some of these hospitals are situated within frontier areas of the United States. This article describes the development of critical access hospitals, provision of care and services, challenges to critical care in critical access hospitals, and suggestions to address gaps in research and collaborative care.

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Taking the Long View: COVID-19 Priorities for the Biden Administration

Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law ◽

10.1215/03616878-8970781 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sandro Galea ◽

Catherine K. Ettman ◽

Nason Maani ◽

Salma M. Abdalla

Keyword(s):

Safety Net ◽

The United States ◽

Social Safety Net ◽

Health Decision Making ◽

Political Landscape ◽

National Conversation ◽

The Social ◽

National Response ◽

Health Decision ◽

Policy Priority

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the American political landscape, influencing the course of the 2020 election and creating an urgent policy priority for the new administration. “The Biden-Harris plan to beat COVID-19” represents a practicable, technically competent, plan to contain the pandemic, one that will serve the country well in the months ahead. We suggest that the United States would also benefit from an even bolder set of aspirations—reframing of the national conversation on COVID-19, embedding equity in all health decision making, strengthening the social safety net, and changing how we talk about health—as part of the national response to COVID-19. This would represent a genuine step forward in our approach to health, informed by the systemic flaws COVID-19 exposed, and realize benefits from the pandemic moment that would propel national health forward for the rest of the century.

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Have the 1996 Welfare Reforms and Expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit Eliminated the Need for a Basic Income Guarantee in the United States?

The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee ◽

10.4324/9781315239934-11 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 183-197

Author(s):

James B. Bryan

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Income Tax ◽

The United States ◽

Earned Income Tax Credit ◽

Tax Credit ◽

Basic Income ◽

Earned Income ◽

Welfare Reforms

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Health Care

The Narcissism of Minor Differences ◽

10.1093/oso/9780195391206.003.0006 ◽

2010 ◽

Author(s):

Peter Baldwin

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Health Care ◽

Health Insurance ◽

Social Policy ◽

Health System ◽

The United States ◽

Working People ◽

Free Health Care ◽

European Standards ◽

Political Philosopher

The U.S. Economy does Differ from Europe’s: a less regulated labor market, but also an economy that is more hemmed in than might be expected. By European standards, America has hardish-working people, a state that collects fewer tax dollars, and workers who are paid well even if their holidays are short. In social policy, the contrasts are more moderate. Europeans commonly believe that the United States simply has no social policy—no social security, no unemployment benefits, no state pensions, and no assistance for the poor. As Jean-François Revel, the political philosopher and académicien, summed up French criticism, the United States shows “not the slightest bit of social solidarity.” Will Hutton similarly assures us that “The structures that support ordinary peoples’ lives—free health care, quality education, guarantees of reasonable living standards in old age, sickness or unemployment, housing for the disadvantaged— that Europeans take for granted are conspicuous by their absence.” And, in fact, the United States is the only developed nation, unless one counts South Africa, without some form of national health insurance, which is to say a system of requiring all its citizens to be insured in one way or another. This lack of universal health insurance is the one fact that every would-be comparativist working across the Atlantic knows, and the first one to be hoisted as the battle is engaged. One of the first attempts to quantify and rank health care performance, by the World Health Organization in 2000, gave the American system its due. Overall, it came in below any of our comparison countries, three notches under Denmark. In various specific aspects of health policy, it did better. For disability adjusted life expectancy, it came in above Ireland, Denmark, and Portugal; on the responsiveness of the health system, it ranked first; on a composite measure of various indicators summed up as “overall health system attainment,” it ranked above seven Western European countries. Even on the measure of “fairness of financial contribution to health systems,” where we might have expected an abysmal rating, the United States squeaked in above Portugal. That is, of course, damning with faint praise, especially given that in this particular aspect of the ranking—a well-meaning but other-worldly attempt by international bureaucrats to rake the entire globe over the teeth of one comb—Colombia came in first, outpacing its close rivals, Luxembourg and Belgium, while Libya beat out Sweden.

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