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The Public Good, Public Health, and the Affordable Care Act: Part 1

IMGP3169October 10, 2013.

Political discourse related to naming access to health care as a priority shows expansion to the underserved and needy during the era of the Great Society, when Presidents Kennedy and Johnson expanded the social welfare and services system. During this era, the arguments in support of an economic model to support the government’s role in health and health care extended well beyond the need to keep a work force healthy. They included powerless groups, such as the elderly, who needed government assistance. They also included migrant farmworkers who harvest much of the nation’s food but often lack access to health care. Edward Murrow first exposed the conditions in which these laborers exist in the documentary, “Harvest of Shame.”    

My first doctoral student to complete her degree as my advisee told me about her mother’s labors in harvesting the nation’s crops in the fields of California. Her mother died at a young age from cancer likely the result of pesticide exposure during those long hours of harvesting.

From a social justice side, it seems only fair to provide care to the nation’s harvesters of food. When that assertion did not work, evidence that a harvester’s poor health and poor sanitation habits–failure to wash hands, for example–could contaminate the food supply was brought forth. This argument relates to public health and the public good, such that safeguarding the health of those who harvest our food benefits everyone’s health. Too little discussed in conversations about affordable health care are the issues related to public health and the public good.    

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Author: Roxanne

I have always loved to learn. After years of trying to pick a major as an undergraduate, I met a professor who guided me to graduate school. And from graduate school, I learned that I could always go to school and keep on learning. And so I have...

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