Beyond Health Care

2019 ◽  
pp. 248-296
Author(s):  
Alex Rajczi
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Health Care ◽  
Conservative View ◽  
The U.S

This chapter argues that this book’s examination of the American health care debate has revealed larger lessons. Latent in our discussion is a whole new approach to debates about the social minimum—one that can prove useful during inquiries into any part of the social safety net, not just health care, and that can be applied to debates in any country, not just the U.S. Specifically, the discussion in the previous chapters has hinted at a way of understanding a conservative point of view about distributive justice, one that is usually overlooked. This chapter describes it more thoroughly and explains why it is philosophically significant. The chapter then identifies the parts of the conservative view that progressives might challenge, thereby building up a picture of the progressive view itself. The chapter closes by explaining why it is valuable to frame debates over the social safety net in this new way.

The U.S. Welfare State Is Minimal

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-105
Author(s):  
Mark Robert Rank ◽  
Lawrence M. Eppard ◽  
Heather E. Bullock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
The Social ◽  
Welfare Expenditures ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 13 examines the size of the social safety net in the United States. Compared with European and other OECD countries, the United States has a fairly small safety net. The amount spent is approximately 2 percent of our GDP. In particular, programs aimed at protecting children from poverty are minimal. These programs have also been reduced over time, especially since the 1996 welfare reform changes. Challenging the myth of the bloated welfare state requires tackling multiple intersecting misperceptions, including erroneous portrayals of U.S. welfare expenditures as exorbitant and low-income programs as driving up the national debt. It will also require shattering myths that legitimize keeping welfare benefits low.

The Coal Miner’s Granddaughter

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-95
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Silva
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Working Class ◽  
White Women ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Personal Trust ◽  
Working Class Women

This chapter documents how white working-class women mourn the loss of their subordinate roles as wives and mothers, even as they are victimized in those roles. Living on the edge of poverty, struggling to afford heat, housing, health care, and food for their children, white women wage their political battles within the context of the fragile and aggrieved working-class family. Some women reject the social safety net in the belief that suffering is good for the soul. Condemning their own family members for their inability to rise above pain serves as a way to feel validated, in control, and safe. Some women cut themselves off from family members who have hurt them by deciding that dependence makes them vulnerable, and isolation is the safest way to survive. For others, the impossibility of personal trust in the family simply renders impersonal trust in democracy unimaginable.

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

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.

“Willing to Do Anything for My Kids”: Inventive Mothering, Diapers, and the Inequalities of Carework

2020 ◽  
pp. 000312242097748
Author(s):  
Jennifer Randles
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Intensive Mothering ◽  
Child Centered ◽  
White Mothers ◽  
Mothers Of Color ◽  
Depth Interviews

Prior research highlights how mothers across social classes express similar beliefs that good parenting adheres to the tenets of intensive mothering by being child-centered, time-consuming, and self-sacrificing. Yet intensive mothering ideologies emphasize parenting tactics that assume children’s basic needs are met, while ignoring how mothers in poverty devise distinctive childrearing strategies and logics to perform carework demanded by deprivation, discrimination, and a meager social safety net. I theorize inventive mothering that instead highlights the complexity and agency of poor mothers’ innovative efforts to ensure children’s access to resources, protect children from the harms of poverty and racism, and present themselves as fit parents in the context of intersecting gender, class, and race stigma. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 70 mothers who experienced diaper need, I conceptualize diaper work as a case of inventive mothering that involves extensive physical, cognitive, and emotional labor. These findings show how focusing on childrearing practices experienced as “intense” from the point of view of more affluent, white mothers perpetuates inequalities by obscuring the complex labor poor mothers, especially poor mothers of color, perform when there is limited public support for fundamental aspects of childcare.

Caught in the Net: The Impact of Changes to Canadian Employment Insurance Legislation on Part-time Workers

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norene Pupo ◽  
Ann Duffy
Keyword(s):  
Labour Force ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Employment Insurance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Canadian Context ◽  
Insurance Programme ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Industrialised Countries ◽  
The Impact

Throughout Western highly industrialised countries, there has been a marked shift toward more conservative social policies signalling a dismantling of the welfare state as part of the process of globalisation. This paper examines the aetiology of the (un)employment insurance programme in the Canadian context. Recently, legislators have tightened eligibility rules, lowered earnings replacement rates and altered coverage requirements. While these changes signal a shredding of the social safety net, they differentially impact on certain segments of the population. Despite official pronouncements of fairness, employment insurance changes intensify the subordination women experience in the paid labour force.

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