Book 2 CH. 3

Starr discusses some very salient political issues and concepts that I am coming to realize are so relevant not because of a specific alignment of circumstances, but rather, disappointingly, because of a disappointing habit of history to repeat itself. However, some of his political conversations seem glossed over, which detracts from the chapter's content as well.

In it, Starr describes the contributions of President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson and their contributions to the effort of improved health access, though both attempts were indirect or incidental to medical care reform. In both, and rather somberly framed by a post-mortem aspect, Starr describes Kennedy's contributions after his death--actions to fight American poverty--and Johnson's subsequent continuation of those efforts as attempts at uniting the people against civil and economic disparity, that would potentially affect access to health care. but the point Starr seems to make is that neither astutely addressed how fighting poverty would directly affect or improve health care access. In this way, I interpret this to mean that any good for the movement of improved equal access health care was lost because no concrete plan supported it, if (and unlikely so) it was ever actually part of the goal when conceived by either Kennedy or Johnson.

Today we have a much more direct fight for health care reform, but the hastiness of the bill, the energy spent fighting unstiable critics, paralleles this threat of poor planning (a very real criticism of the health care bill on both sides) that very clearly reduced the benefits of Kennedy and Johnson's indirect efforts to promote human rights to equivalent health care service.

Perhaps, though, there is too much focus on the role and pwoer of politicians in this process. Investigating he situations in which reform "disappeared like a mirage" time and time again, what was the support of the people? In what capacity do the people negotiate their desire for medical reform and equivalent access and their desire for indvidual freedom of access? Will the people support it and will resounding support cause it to finally materialize? Currently a well played hand has resulted in a portion of the country fighting against reform that will most likely benefit them. It has since become a question to me as to how aware the people were each time health care reform was attempted. I certainly was unaware of efforts preceding the present beyond institutions like Medicare and Medicaid.

With such contentious debate, it seems as though history gets forgotten rather easily. Starr devotes a large portion of the chapter discussing the impact of liberals and their ideology fueling the movement toward health care reform, but civil rights from modern liberalism aren't born out of nowhere. People have to want it. Additionally, the liberalism Starr describes doesn't seem to be differentiated into classical liberalism and modern liberalism. Truly, the characterization of the medical practice detailed throughout the book is classically liberal, with the emphasis on negative freedoms of the professional community. However, much of this chapter is focused on the movement of modenr liberalism, and that is an important distinction that Starr seems to miss in this description. Therein lies a very interesting conceptualization and clash for medical and health care freedoms, especially when Starr elaborates on both parties' mutal cooperation in the past.