Investigator Awards In Health Policy Research 53 Bay State Road
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Investigator publications listed on this site relate to research funded through the Investigator Awards program. References are provided for books and selected journal articles written by the investigators. Abstracts are available for some featured publications.
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Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know
Skocpol, T., Jacobs, L.R.
Published: 2010
Oxford University Press
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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama in March 2010 is a landmark in U.S. social legislation. The new law extends health insurance to nearly all Americans, fulfilling a century-long quest and bringing the United States to parity with other industrial nations. Affordable Care aims to control rapidly rising health care costs and promises to make the United States more equal, reversing four decades of rising disparities between the very rich and everyone else. Millions of people of modest means will gain new benefits and protections from insurance company abuses - and the tab will be paid by privileged corporations and the very rich.

How did such a bold reform effort pass in a polity wracked by partisan divisions and intense lobbying by special interests? What does Affordable Care mean - and what comes next? In Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know , Lawrence R. Jacobs and Theda Skocpol--two of the nation's leading experts on politics and health care policy--provide a concise and accessible overview. They explain the political battles of 2009 and 2010, highlighting White House strategies, the deals Democrats cut with interest groups, and the impact of agitation by Tea Partiers and progressives. Jacobs and Skocpol spell out what the new law can do for everyday Americans, what it will cost, and who will pay. Above all, they explain what comes next, as critical yet often behind-the-scenes battles rage over implementing reform nationally and in the fifty states. Affordable Care might end up being weakened. But, like Social Security and Medicare, it could also gain strength and popularity as the majority of Americans learn what it can do for them.

Linked Investigator Award(s):
Lawrence R. Jacobs, Ph.D.Democracy, Leadership and Health Care
Award Year: 1993

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Dr. Jacobs develops a theoretical framework for conceptualizing the relationship between national policymakers and public opinion in relation to the debate over health care reform. He investigates the relationship between public opinion, media coverage, and the decisions of Congress and the Clinton administration. Questions about what type of opinion-policy relationship should exist in a democracy are addressed, including whether policy leaders, in designing current health policy, are responding to public opinion or directing it. The project also explores: mass media coverage of health care; media's influence on the issues that people identify as important; the policy directions they favor; and the accuracy of the media's interpretations of public opinion polls. Extensive analysis of polling data, President Clinton's policy statements, Congressional records, media coverage, and interviews with key policymakers is undertaken. Robert Y. Shapiro, Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, collaborates.
Theda Skocpol, Ph.D.Health Care Reforms in the United States: Institutions, Alliances, and Policy Feedbacks
Award Year: 1993

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This project examines major episodes of actual and attempted U.S. health care reforms, dating from the 1930s to the 1990s. It analyzes changes and continuities in institutional contexts, political alliances, and policy feedbacks, i.e., the effects of earlier policies on later policymaking. It provides an intellectual framework for considering change in institutional and political contexts, within which reforms are debated and (if enacted) implemented, and analyzes their effects on subsequent political dynamics and reform. The analysis deals with the past for its own sake as well as large-scale institutional and political processes. It critically examines the strategic choices, successes, and errors of reform-minded experts. It draws clear lessons for advocates of broadening social access and controlling health care costs to use in strategic political choices during the 1990s and early 2000s.
More Books by Author(s):
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Brown, L.D., Jacobs, L., Morone, J. editors, Healthy, Wealthy and Fair: Health Care for a Good Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Jacobs, L.R., Shapiro, R.Y., Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness. University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Skocpol, T., Boomerang: Health Care Reform and the Turn Against Government. W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.