Podcast: UH Hilo sociology professor Lindy Hern answers the question, “What is universal healthcare and why is the U.S. the only major country without it?”
Lindy Hern, author of a book on single payer healthcare reform, discusses the nation’s current healthcare system, what different types of universal systems look like, and how a single payer system would make healthcare in the U.S. more efficient, inclusive, and affordable.
By Susan Enright/UH Hilo Stories.
An associate professor of sociology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo is a guest today on the podcast, “In Good Society.” The podcast focuses on important social issues and the movements that address them. In the month of November, the focus is on health care, and Lindy Hern was invited for an interview by host Sydney Sauer, a sociology student at Ohio State University. The topic: Universal Healthcare 101.
“It was very timely given the global pandemic that we have been experiencing,” says Hern.
Hern is the author of the book, Single Payer Healthcare Reform: Grassroots Mobilization and the Turn Against Establishment Politics in the Medicare for All Movement, published last year by Palgrave Macmillan.
In the book, Hern, who describes herself a scholar-activist primarily through her work for progressive health care reform, approaches her topic in three main ways. She provides a comprehensive history of the grassroots movement for health care reform in the United States from within the single-payer movement. She discusses the role that narrative or “constructions of opportunity” plays in grassroots mobilization, which builds on existing social movement theory. And she examines the turn against “politics as usual” and establishment politicians that began in progressive social movements long before the election of Donald Trump.
- Learn more about the book: New book by sociologist examines single-payer healthcare reform (UH Hilo Stories, July 21, 2020)
Hern says podcast host Sauer read the book.
“Sydney asked me to be a guest on the podcast due to my research on health policy and healthcare reform,” explains Hern. “The focus of this interview was on covering the basics of healthcare policy and the way that universal healthcare systems work around the world, as well as what might be possible in the United States.”
Podcast
In the podcast, Hern and Sauer discuss the nation’s current healthcare system and the problems it causes, what different types of universal systems look like around the world, and how a single payer system would make healthcare in the U.S. more efficient, inclusive, and affordable. These topics are a part of what Hern discusses in her book, which focuses on the last 30 years of movement mobilization for single-payer healthcare, and she made the podcast discussion relevant to the current pandemic crisis.
“I was able to connect the material presented in the book to some more current COVID 19 related issues, so that was interesting,” Hern says. “I finished writing the book in the winter of 2019, so the book itself does not cover the pandemic. I was happy to be able to discuss this in a public venue, having already presented a paper about the effects of the COVID 19 pandemic on movement mobilization for a national conference just a few weeks ago.”
Story by Susan Enright, public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.
