Framing the debate

As US healthcare reform rumbles on, both sides are using similar rhetoric to sell their positions

 
Healthcare reform has been one of the top stories of the Obama administration. People from around the world, particularly in Europe, have registered some surprise at the controversy inspired by the main goals of the reforms – to expand coverage to the millions of uninsured, and bolster coverage for the millions more underinsured, while containing costs. While the citizens of most nations at one time accessed medical care through the free market, almost all industrialised nations have long incorporated healthcare into some version of the welfare state, in that tax dollars guarantee at least a minimum level of universal coverage. In the United States, a series of historical circumstances led to a somewhat different situation, inasmuch as health coverage came to be a benefit of employment, rather than a right of citizenship.

Emily West

Emily West is assistant professor of communications at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research and teaching specialties are in consumer culture, media studies, and qualitative research methods. West’s past research on media representations of healthcare policy appears in Social Semiotics and Communication Review. Her current research examines how healthcare users’ understandings of healthcare consumerism vary with their level of health security and their health status.