Health Justice

DSA Eugene Discussion guide

“Health Care Reform and Social Movements”
by Beatrix Hoffman
Article found here
Printable booklet found here

Optional readings in the Healthcare Readings folder:

By Beatrix Hoffman:

The False Promise of the Private Welfare State
Restraining the Health Care Consumer
Tell Me Again: Why Is There No National Health Insurance In The United States?

By Other Authors:

The Persistence of the Health Insurance Dilemma
The Praxis of Poor People’s Movements
Policy-Elite Perceptions and Social Movement Success
Buying Access
2011 Health Care Transformation
Rights to Health Care in the United States: Inherently Unstable
The Future of Medicaid Transformation

Additional links:

Undocumented, Uninsured, Unafraid
(By Beatrix Hoffman in Dissent Magazine, Spring 2018)
Immigration and the Right to Health Care
(YouTube; Beatrix Hoffman at Boston College)
Q-and-A: NIU’s Beatrix Hoffman discusses her new book on history of U.S. health care rights
Health Care for Some
(C-SPAN, talk by Beatrix Hoffman at Grand Valley State University)
Interview with Beatrix Hoffman
(Vimeo, 2012)

Possible Discussion Questions:

  • What are the benefits and trade offs of professionalizing resistance?
  • In what ways do professional advocacy groups differ from what you understand to be grassroots initiatives?
  • What impediments do you imagine undermine grassroots organizing?