Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-ntvhh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-18T15:31:04.163Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“What Rights?” The Construction of Political Claims to American Health Care Entitlements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Sandra R. Levitsky
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite a growing health care crisis, Americans remain reluctant to treat “health security” as a right or entitlement of citizenship. This article examines the effects of unmet health care needs on the beliefs that individuals hold about family, market, and state responsibility for health security. Drawing on a study of individuals caring for family members with chronic diseases, I find that when imagining solutions to unmet long-term care needs, individuals evaluate a range of alternative social arrangements, but they select the model that is most consistent with previously existing beliefs about family, market, and state responsibility for care provision. This process of discursive assimilation, of integrating new needs for public provision with more familiar ways of thinking about social welfare, produces claims for entitlements that challenge existing social arrangements but do so within a welfare state framework that conceives of only a minimal role for the state in safeguarding social welfare.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , September 2008 , pp. 551 - 590
Copyright
© 2008 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

Research for this article was funded in part by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (SES-0413840) and a dissertation fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. The author gratefully acknowledges the generous contributions of Mark Suchman, Catherine Albiston, Howard Erlanger, Myra Marx Ferree, Pamela Oliver, participants in the UC-Irvine Social Movements/Social Justice Workgroup, and the anonymous reviewers at Law & Society Review.

References

Abel, Emily K. (1991) Who Cares for the Elderly? Public Policy and the Experiences of Adult Daughters. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Albiston, Catherine R. (2005) “Bargaining in the Shadow of Social Institutions: Competing Discourses and Social Change in Workplace Mobilization of Civil Rights,” 39 Law & Society Rev. 11–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albrecht, Terrance, et al. (1993) “Understanding Communication Processes in Focus Groups,” in Morgan, D. L., ed., Successful Focus Groups. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Alzheimer's Association & National Alliance for Caregiving (1999) Who Cares? Families Caring for Persons with Alzheimer's Disease. Washington, DC: Alzheimer's Association & National Alliance for Caregiving.Google Scholar
Archbold, P. J. (1982) “An Analysis of Parent Caring by Women,” 3 Home Health Care Services Q. 5–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Britt, Lory, & Heise, David (2000) “From Shame to Pride in Identity Politics,” in Stryker, S. et al., eds., Self, Identity, and Social Movements. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Brody, Elaine M. (2004) Women in the Middle: Their Parent Care Years. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Burwell, Brian (1991) Middle-Class Welfare: Medicaid Estate Planning for Long-Term Care Coverage. Cambridge, MA: SysteMetrics.Google Scholar
Cook, Fay Lomax, & Barrett, Edith J. (1992) Support for the American Welfare State: The Views of Congress and the Public. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Daly, Mary (2001) “Care Policies in Western Europe,” in Daly, M., ed., Care Work: the Quest for Security. Geneva: International Labour Office.Google Scholar
Daly, Mary, & Rake, Katherine (2003) Gender and the Welfare State: Care, Work and Welfare in Europe and the USA. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Dunham, Charlotte, & Dietz, Bernadette E. (2003) “‘If I'm Not Allowed to Put My Family First’: Challenges Experienced by Women Who Are Caregiving for Family Members with Dementia,” 15 J. of Women & Aging 55–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eckholm, Erik, ed. (1993) Solving America's Health-Care Crisis. New York: Times Books, Random House.Google Scholar
Ehrenreich, Barbara, & Hochschild, Arlie, eds. (2002) Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
Engel, David M. (1980) “Legal Pluralism in an American Community: Perspectives on a Civil Trial Court,” 3 American Bar Foundation Research J. 425–54.Google Scholar
Engel, David M., & Munger, Frank W. (2003) Rights of Inclusion: Law and Identity in the Life Stories of Americans with Disabilities. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
England, Paula, & Folbre, Nancy (1999) “The Cost of Caring,” 561 ANNALS, AAPSS 39–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, & Silbey, Susan S. (1998) The Common Place of Law. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felstiner, William, et al. (1980–1981) “The Emergence of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming …,” 15 Law & Society Rev. 631–54.Google Scholar
Ferree, Myra Marx (2003) “Resonance and Radicalism: Feminist Framing in the Abortion Debates of the United States and Germany,” 109 American J. of Sociology 304–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferree, Myra Marx, & Miller, Frederick D. (1985) “Mobilization and Meaning: Toward an Integration of Social Psychological and Resource Perspectives on Social Movements,” 55 Sociological Inquiry 38–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferree, Myra Marx, et al. (2002) Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the United States. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, Nancy (1989) Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy (1997) Justice Interruptus. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy, & Gordon, Linda (1992) “Contract Versus Charity: Why Is There No Social Citizenship in the United States?,” 22 Socialist Rev. 45–67.Google Scholar
Gamson, William A. (1992) Talking Politics. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Gamson, William A. (1995) “Constructing Social Protest,” in Johnston, H. & Klandermans, B., eds., Social Movements and Culture. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Gamson, William A., et al. (1982) Encounters with Unjust Authority. Chicago: Dorsey Press.Google Scholar
Garey, Anita Ilta, et al. (2002) “Care and Kinship,” 23 J. of Family Issues 703–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
George, Linda K., & Gwyther, Lisa P. (1986) “Caregiver Well-Being: A Multidimensional Examination of Family Caregivers of Demented Adults,” 26 Gerontological Society of America 253–9.Google ScholarPubMed
Gilliom, John (2001) Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Glazer, Nona Y. (1988) “Overlooked, Overworked: Women's Unpaid and Paid Work in the Health Services' Cost Crisis,” 18 International J. of Health Services 119–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano (2000) “Creating a Caring Society,” 29 Contemporary Sociology 84–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Linda (1994) Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890–1935. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Greenhouse, Carol (1986) Praying for Justice: Faith, Order, and Community in an American Town. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Grogan, Colleen, & Patashnik, Eric (2003) “Universalism within Targeting: Nursing Home Care, the Middle Class, and the Politics of the Medicaid Program,” 77 Social Service Rev. 51–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacker, Jacob S. (2006) The Great Risk Shift. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Harrington, Mona (2000) Care and Equality. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie (2003) The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette (2001) Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Influence. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Lawrence R. (1993) “Health Reform Impasse: The Politics of American Ambivalence toward Government,” 18 J. of Health Politics, Policy and Law 629–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jasper, James M. (1998) “The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and Around Social Movements,” 13 Sociological Forum 397–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Lynn (2006) “The Haves Come Out Ahead: How Cause Lawyers Frame the Legal System for Movements,” in Sarat, A. & Scheingold, S. A., eds., Cause Lawyers and Social Movements. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Koren, M. J. (1986) “Home Care—Who Cares?,” 314 New England J. of Medicine 917–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kull, Steven (2000) Americans on Health Care Policy: A Study of U.S. Public Attitudes. Washington, DC: Center on Policy Attitudes.Google Scholar
Kurzman, Charles (1996) “Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in Social-Movement Theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979,” 61 American Sociological Rev. 153–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitsky, Sandra R. (2006) “Private Dilemmas of Public Provision: The Formation of Political Demand for State Entitlements to Long-Term Care.” Ph.D. diss., Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Stewart (1963) “Non-Contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study,” 28 American Sociological Rev. 55–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansbridge, Jane (2001) “The Making of Oppositional Consciousness,” in Mansbridge, J. & Morris, A., eds., Oppositional Consciousness. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marmor, Theodore R., et al. (1990) America's Misunderstood Welfare State: Persistent Myths, Enduring Realities. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Marshall, Anna-Maria (2003) “Injustice Frames, Legality, and the Everyday Construction of Sexual Harassment,” 28 Law and Social Inquiry 659–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mather, Lynn, & Yngvesson, Barbara (1981) “Language, Audience, and the Transformation of Disputes,” 15 Law & Society Rev. 775–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, Doug (1982) Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John D., & Zald, Mayer N. (1977) “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” 82 American J. of Sociology 1212–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle (1990) Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness Among Working-Class Americans. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
MetLife Mature Market Institute (2005) The MetLife Market Survey of Nursing Home Care Costs. Westport, CT: MetLife Mature Market Institute.Google Scholar
Meyer, David S. (2004) “Protest and Political Opportunities,” 30 Annual Rev. of Sociology 125–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, Madonna Harrington (1994) “The Impact of Family Status on Income Security and Health Care in Old Age: A Comparison of Western Nations,” 14 International J. of Sociology and Social Policy 53–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, Madonna Harrington (2005) “Decreasing Welfare, Increasing Old Age Inequality: Whose Responsibility Is It?,” in Hudson, R. B., ed., The New Politics of Old Age Policy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Barrington Jr. (1978) Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt. White Plains, NY: M. E. Sharpe.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Aldon D. (1992) “Political Consciousness and Collective Action,” in Morris, A. & Mueller, C. M., eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Moses, Stephen A. (1996) “Medicaid Stifles LTC Ins. Purchases,” National Underwriter, 5 Aug., p. S9.Google Scholar
Moss, David A. (2004) When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Laura Beth (2000) “Situating Legal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment,” 34 Law & Society Rev. 1055–90.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Laura Beth (2004) License to Harass: Law, Hierarchy, and Offensive Public Speech. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Ellen, & Elias, Risa (2004) Medicaid and Long-Term Care. Washington, DC: Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.Google Scholar
Polletta, Francesca (2000) “The Structural Context of Novel Rights Claims: Southern Civil Rights Organizing, 1961–1966,” 34 Law & Society Rev. 367–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poulshock, S. Walter, & Deimling, Gary T. (1984) “Families Caring for Elders in Residence: Issues in the Measurement of Burden,” 39 J. of Gerontology 230–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Primus, Richard A. (1999) The American Language of Rights. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scharlach, Andrew, et al. (2003) California's Family Caregiver Support System: Findings and Recommendations. Berkeley: Center for the Advanced Study of Aging Services, University of California-Berkeley.Google Scholar
Schehr, Robert (2005) “Conventional Risk Discourse and the Proliferation of Fear,” 16 Criminal Justice Policy Rev. 38–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schulz, Richard, & Beach, Scott (1999) “Caregiving as a Risk Factor for Mortality: The Caregiver Health Effects Study,” 282 JAMA 2215–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sewell, William H. Jr. (1992) “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation,” 98 American J. of Sociology 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skocpol, Theda (1988) “The Limits of the New Deal System and the Roots of Contemporary Welfare Dilemmas,” in Weir, M. et al., eds., The Politics of Social Policy in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda (1991) “Targeting Within Universalism: Politically Viable Policies to Combat Poverty in the United States,” in Jencks, C. & Peterson, P. E., eds., The Urban Underclass. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Snow, David A., et al. (1986) “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation,” 51 American Sociological Rev. 464–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, David A., et al. (1998) “Disrupting the ‘Quotidian’: Reconceptualizing the Relationship Between Breakdown and the Emergence of Collective Action,” 3 Mobilization: An International J. 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, David, & Benford, Robert D. (1988) “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization,” in Klandermans, B. et al., eds., From Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movement Research Across Cultures. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Snow, David, & Benford, Robert D. (1992) “Master Frames and Cycles of Protest,” in Morris, A. D. & Mueller, C. M., eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Steinberg, Marc W. (1999) “The Talk and Back Talk of Collective Action: A Dialogic Analysis of Repertoires of Discourse among Nineteenth-Century English Cotton Spinners,” 105 American J. of Sociology 736–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, Rosemary (1989) In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Suh, Doowon (2001) “How Do Political Opportunities Matter for Social Movements? Political Opportunity, Misframing, Pseudosuccess, and Pseudofailure,” 42 Sociological Q. 437–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swidler, Ann (1986) “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” 51 American Sociological Rev. 273–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney (1994) Power in Movement. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Verta (2000) “Emotions and Identity in Women's Self-Help Movements,” in Stryker, S. et al., eds., Self, Identity, and Social Movements. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Ralph, & Killian, Lewis M. (1987) Collective Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (1998) Informal Caregiving: Compassion in Action. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.Google Scholar
Wabakayashi, Chizuko, & Donato, Katherine M. (2005) “The Consequences of Caregiving: Effects on Women's Employment and Earnings,” 24 Population Research and Policy Rev. 467–88.Google Scholar