(Un)Caring Words: How Discourses of Publicly Funded Health Care Reproduce Deficit Thinking

• In Event: Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Teaching for Transformation and Conscientization

Abstract

Our research uses a critical, poststructuralist lens to challenge the discourse of a government-managed healthcare system that purports to care yet constructs and reproduces deficit thinking about people who are economically disadvantaged. Furthermore, we demonstrate how demoralizing healthcare experiences and the construction of an identity of inadequacy have negative consequences that extend beyond the individual and the home, impacting educational attainment. Through inductive analysis of participant interviews, documents, and five researchers' fieldnotes, we explore point-of-care experiences of 15 participants in TennCare, a government-funded healthcare program in Tennessee. Initial findings show themes of shame, helplessness, and participants’ desire to shelter their children from similar marginalizing experiences.

Authors

• Janet K. Isbell, Tennessee Technological University

• Lisa L. Zagumny, Tennessee Technological University

• Julie C. Baker, Tennessee Technological University

• Alice Camuti, Tennessee Technological University

• Amber Spears, Tennessee Technological University