In a new article in The Conversation, Christy Chapin analyzes the history of healthcare in the United States and traces the steps that lead to the insurance company model and the adoption of the Affordable Care Act.

Chapin, an assistant professor of history, is author of Ensuring America’s Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care System (Cambridge University Press 2015), which explains how private and public interests merged to place insurance companies at the center of the U.S. healthcare system. In her article “Why your insurance companies control your medical care,” Chapin draws on research in her book to illustrate how we arrived at the current healthcare debate heading into the 2016 election next month.

Before insurance companies, Chapin explains that prepaid physician groups, comprised of doctors from different specialties, were the dominant model for healthcare between the 1900s and 1940s.

“Many health care reformers, including those behind President Truman’s failed 1948 universal care proposal, hoped to develop the medical economy around prepaid groups. Progressives believed that by federally funding prepaid groups, they could efficiently supply the entire population with comprehensive care,” she writes in the article.

But Chapin explains that the American Medical Association opposed these measures because it feared it might lead to a “corporate medicine” culture and mode of healthcare, which led the to insurance company model.

“AMA leaders decided that rather than allowing doctors to insure patients, only insurance companies would be permitted to offer medical coverage,” explains Chapin.

When Medicare adopted the insurance company model in the 1960s, Chapin writes that health costs skyrocketed which led to the implementation of cost control measures.

“While the flaws of the insurance company model have become more evident, reforming the system has proven extremely difficult. Just look at the Affordable Care Act.”

Read the full article and additional coverage below.

Why insurance companies control your medical care (The Conversation)
How did health insurance get to be such a mess? (Houston Chronicle) 
Why insurance companies control your medical care (SF Gate)
Christy Chapin on the centrality of insurance companies to American health care (Who Makes Cents Podcast)  

Image: Christy Chapin presents a talk on her book at UMBC. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. 

It's time to Register for Spring Classes!

http://coeadvising.umbc.edu

What If I Still Have Questions?

Walk In Advising Hours October 10th & 11th

10/10 & 10/11: 1:30pm-3pm

Beginning 10/12, students will need to sign up for either an individual or group advising appointment online. Walk-in advising will not be available.

http://coeadvising.umbc.edu/

 Note: To access the above link, you must be on the UMBC campus and connected to UMBC WiFi or Internet.

We are proud to report the success of the 2nd LLC Gradate Student Conference: #Intellectual Activist Movement(s): Reconnecting University Scholarship and Community Action.

At least 50 people participated in a conversation on the value of being an intellectual/activist: on lessons learned, on unanswered questions, on how changing socio-cultural landscapes interact with our work, and on what it means to be an intellectual activist in 2016 in Baltimore, the U.S., and internationally.

Each of the panels and the papers presented allowed participants to explore topics such as, promises on teaching and education, memory, the resilience and construction of communities, language, diversity, and power. These topics made attendees think about the need to constantly analyze, critique and act upon structures that maintain and separate the daily experience of individuals and communities.

At the same time, the micro-talks session allowed the audience to engage in debates about the evolving LGBT+ language in digital spaces; the untapped radical potential of Disability Studies to confront inequities of oppression in the university; the presence and action of social movements on campuses, and the reflection on how teachers are intellectual/activists in their daily labor.

Finally, our successful Art as Protest session included powerful performances that reflected upon community, race, gender, and memory. Each performance executed a critique of power, and examined ways of resistance.

Thanks to our presenters, collaborators, and attendees. This conference would not have been possible without the support from the following departments and organizations: The Language, Literacy and Culture Doctoral Program, The LLC GSO, B’PAR GSO, the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, the Department of American Studies, the Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communications Department, and the Student Life’s Mosaic: Center for Culture and Diversity.

To learn more about the conference, please visit the 2nd LLC Conference website

Some pictures taken at the conference are available here: https://flic.kr/s/aHskJcGn7y 

Activities:

Saturday, October 29 3:30pm

An event exclusively for
V-LINC Alums!

Join us!!!
 Northrop Grumman Tour
"Engineering & technology - a glimpse of the innovation behind the scenes!" 
near BWI Airport