Health and Political Economy Featured Article Series
In May 2024, our Health and Political Economy Project team argued for the need for a new kind of “common sense” in the U.S. that recognizes the centrality of our economy to our health. Breaking with a neoliberal paradigm that has privileged market fundamentalism and focused on financialized healthcare, this new common sense would tackle the political-economic drivers of health—from affirmatively investing capital in the social conditions that produce health to shifting narratives about how our political economy and our health are intertwined.
A year later, we’re excited to share a series of articles from sociologists, health policy scholars, practicing physicians, and care economy leaders that offer ideas to advance this direction, in partnership with Health Affairs Scholar and with support from the Commonwealth Fund. While by no means exhaustive, we hope the ideas encompassed in the Health and Political Economy featured article series seed and provoke thinking in ways that fuel new understanding and action. At a time when health is an arena fraught with harmful disruption and rupture, the need for such action feels particularly important.
U.S. health policy—long centered on using public dollars to subsidize private insurance with the limited promise of expanding coverage and delivering higher quality and lower cost care—has proven difficult to change. What would a different paradigm look like?
To be sure, the current political climate will make immediate moves in these directions incredibly challenging. Concrete action at the state and local levels can advance momentum. Alongside that critical work, our current moment of uncertainty and disruption demands ideas that attempt to meet the scale of the challenges people are facing. We view this series as one contribution in that effort—and are eager to learn and join with others seeking to do the same.
Learning From Other Policy Arenas
Advancing a Political Economy Approach to Health Using Lessons from US Antitrust and Climate Policy
By Elizabeth Popp Berman
In her article, Elizabeth Popp Berman, author of Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy, draws on two policy arenas beyond health—antitrust policy and industrial strategy for climate—to surface lessons from which health advocates, scholars, and practitioners can draw. Translating people’s tangible health challenges into politically salient concerns, linking the latent power across civil society, and tapping into grassroots constituencies—strategies used to advance antitrust and climate policy amidst challenging political circumstances—could lay the groundwork for the transformative change we need in health.
Social Insurance for Health Equity
The Fundamental Importance of Social Insurance for Health Equity
By Seth Berkowitz
Rather than over-investing in a financialized healthcare system, we could instead mobilize capital to affirmatively invest directly in people and the environments in which they live. As Seth Berkowitz writes, social insurance is a critical element towards achieving health equity by providing the economic resources people and families need across critical life transitions.
Public Provisioning of Medical Care
Reviving Public Provisioning in U.S. Health Care
By Hayden Rooke-Ley, Dana Brown, and Colleen Grogan
Within healthcare, Hayden Rooke-Ley, Dana Brown, and Colleen Grogan write that investing public dollars directly in public provisioning and infrastructure—from community health centers to pharmaceutical production and procurement—provides a potent route to mobilize capital in ways that meet critical public health missions. Their piece covers plenty of existing examples from which to build forward.
Political Economy of Care
Centering Marginalized Care: Home Care Cooperatives and Systems Change
By Geoff Gusoff, Lina Stepick, Aquilina Soriano-Versoza, and Katrina Kazda
Democratizing Care to Care for Democracy: Community Care Workers and Anti-Racist Public Health
By Raeghn Draper and Eric Reinhart
Two other pieces advance the importance of linking a more just political economy of care to health. Dr. Geoff Gusoff, Lina Stepick, Aquilina Soriano-Versoza, and Katrina Kazda center home health workers and offer lessons from home care cooperatives as one pathway for the systems change needed to properly value a currently marginalized workforce that is critical for the wellbeing and dignity of millions of families caring for loved ones. Further, municipal programs hiring community care workers, as elaborated in a forthcoming piece by Raeghn Draper and Eric Reinhart, can also offer high quality care jobs while providing an alternative response to punitive status quo approaches to public safety.