Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Social Justice
Health Reform Reconstruction, Lindsay F. Wiley, Elizabeth Y. Mccuskey, Matthew B. Lawrence, Erin C. Fuse Brown
Health Reform Reconstruction, Lindsay F. Wiley, Elizabeth Y. Mccuskey, Matthew B. Lawrence, Erin C. Fuse Brown
Faculty Articles
This Article connects the failed, inequitable U.S. coronavirus pandemic response to conceptual and structural constraints that have held back U.S health reform for decades and calls for reconstruction. For more than a half-century, a cramped “iron triangle” ethos has constrained health reform conceptually. Reforms aimed to balance individual interests in cost, quality, and access to health care, while marginalizing equity, solidarity, and public health. In the iron triangle era, reforms unquestioningly accommodated four legally and logistically entrenched fixtures — individualism, fiscal fragmentation, privatization, and federalism — that distort and diffuse any reach toward social justice. The profound racial disparities and …
Against The "Safety Net", Matthew B. Lawrence
Against The "Safety Net", Matthew B. Lawrence
Faculty Articles
Then-Representative Jack Kemp and President Ronald Reagan originated the “safety net” conception of U.S. health and welfare laws in the late 1970s and early 1980s, defending proposed cuts to New Deal and Great Society programs by asserting that such cuts would not take away the “social safety net of programs” for those with “true need.” Legal scholars have adopted their metaphor widely and uncritically. This Article deconstructs the safety net metaphor and counsels against its use in understanding health and welfare laws. The metaphor is descriptively confusing because it means different things to different audiences. Some understand the safety net …