Health Reform after the 2016 Election

In May 2017, Professor Eric Patashnik convened a conference on "Health Reform after the 2016 Election," bringing together scholars to examine and discuss the state of health reform. The contributions led to a special edition of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.

The special issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law will be published in August 2018 by Duke University Press.

On May 19, 2017, Eric Patashnik, Julis-Rabinowitz Professor of Public Policy, directed an all-day conference at the Watson Institute on “Health Reform after the 2016 Election," examining the state of American healthcare policy following the tumultuous presidential election of Donald Trump. The conference brought together some of the nation's leading experts on the politics of health policy in the U.S. Advanced publication versions of the essays now appear on the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law (JHPPL) website.

The special issue includes essays on the near passage of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson), the “existential” threat that Medicaid faced (Sara Rosenbaum), the reasons why conservatives were less willing to accept the ACA than other welfare state expansions such as Social Security and Medicare (Eric Patashnik & Jon Oberlander), and President Trump’s approach to ACA repeal in contrast to that of the legacies of other modern Republican administrations (Morone).