203 - Special Session. U.S. Health Care Policy and Reform

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) represents the most significant reform of the U.S. health care system in decades. But the new law, which encompasses a hybrid financing system to increase access to insurance for low- and moderate-income Americans, did not result from a large-scale popular movement demanding access to affordable and quality care. There were some ballot initiatives and political campaigns for universal care or for a single-payer system in a handful of states (e.g., Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon), but for the most part health care reform at the beginning of the 21st Century resulted from government led action, not unlike that of the Johnson administration 50 years ago.

Today, popular support for reform remains fragmented, despite the promise of the ACA to redress the problems of un-insurance and under-insurance and of achieving other social, economic and political goals. Is health care reform different (in sponsorship, tactics and goals) this time around from earlier efforts at revamping the system and how so? Will recent experience with the ACA foster a movement for universal health care, or a single-payer system or will it prevent government-led policy interventions of this kind in the future? Do improvements achieved through the ACA represent a step forward or an obstacle to more comprehensive reform? What social, economic and political forces help explain the passage of the ACA? What are the critiques of the American health care system that may galvanize support for deeper or different reforms?

Sub Unit

• Special Sessions

Session Organizer

• Aixa N. Cintron-Velez, Russell Sage Foundation

Presider

• Sheldon Danziger, Russell Sage Foundation

Panelists

• Sandra R. Levitsky, University of Michigan

• Helen Levy

• Theda Skocpol, Harvard University

• Peter Orszag, Lazard