IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v28y1989i6p531-538.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The fruits of empire rot on the vine: United States health policy in the austerity era

Author

Listed:
  • Bodenheimer, Thomas S.

Abstract

Since 1970--with the decline in the hegemonic empire--the U.S. economy has entered a period of lower profitability, producing a major shift in the economic behavior of corporate capital. In contrast to the demand stimulation (New Deal) programs of the earlier period of prosperity capitalism, capital has moved toward a profit stimulation strategy in the current era of austerity capitalism. Fundamental to this austerity strategy is the drive to reduce costs of production. Both governmental and employee health benefits represent a cost of production. Thus in the health field, austerity strategy signifies a reduction in the provision of health benefits to employees and cuts in governmental health programs. An effect of austerity capitalism may be that health patterns now mainly confined to the underdeveloped world will become more prominent among the low-wage and unemployed sectors of the working class in the United States.

Suggested Citation

  • Bodenheimer, Thomas S., 1989. "The fruits of empire rot on the vine: United States health policy in the austerity era," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 531-538, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:28:y:1989:i:6:p:531-538
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(89)90247-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Berliner, Lauren S. & Kenworthy, Nora J., 2017. "Producing a worthy illness: Personal crowdfunding amidst financial crisis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 233-242.
    2. R A Kearns & J R Barnett, 1992. "Enter the Supermarket: Entrepreneurial Medical Practice in New Zealand," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 10(3), pages 267-281, September.
    3. Kamran Nayeri, 1995. "Economic Boundaries of Health Care: Factors Influencing Reform Proposals," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 27(4), pages 56-82, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:28:y:1989:i:6:p:531-538. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.