Why won’t it sell? Universal Health Care in America, 1945 - 2009
Abstract
This project examines the language used to frame universal health care reform from
1945 to 2009, focusing on four frames: morality, efficacy, personal vulnerability,
and fear of government. It analyzes whether the frames used by the opponents and proponents
of reform evolved by researching three health care debates: President Truman from
1945-1950, President Clinton from 1993-1994, and President Obama in 2009.The analysis
focuses on speeches given by the presidents, advertisements produced by interest groups,
and newspaper coverage of the debates. For all three presidencies, fear of government
was the frame most commonly used by opponents of reform in advertisements while morality
was the frame most commonly used by proponents. This suggests that the language has
not evolved significantly over the past sixty years and provides insight into why
universal health care reform continues to fail. Notably, however, there is a trend
in the Obama administration toward utilizing the personal vulnerability frame. Ultimately,
this project found that self-interested arguments are the most effective, and therefore
opponents should continue to address people’s fear of government while proponents
should follow President Obama’s lead in utilizing the personal vulnerability frame.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
Public Policy StudiesPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/1682Citation
Aberger, Marie (2009). Why won’t it sell? Universal Health Care in America, 1945 - 2009. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/1682.Collections
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