As the nation once more grapples with the question of access to affordable and adequate health care as a right of citizenship versus a benefit of social advantage, Columbia University Press has just released School of Social Work Professor Gunnar Almgren's new book, Health Care as Right of Citizenship. In the book, he argues that the Affordable Care Act’s primary significance is not in its expansion of health care entitlements to millions of uninsured Americans, but rather in its affirmation, by an act of Congress, the idea that access to an adequate standard of health care, like access to an adequate standard of basic education, should be a social right of citizenship. It is this idea that is at the heart of the current public controversy over the ACA “repeal and replace” agenda of the new administration and the majority party in Congress.
The format for the event will be a brief overview of the evolution of American exceptionalism in health care, the current political and social context that motivated the book, and the book’s main arguments by the book’s author, followed by a discussion with and among the audience facilitated by UW Professor of Philosophy Bill Talbott.
Friday April 21, 2017, 3:30 – 5 p.m.
Room 1-A, Gowen Hall, UW Seattle
The event is free and open to the UW community. Event details.