Bio:
Colleen M. Grogan, PhD is the Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Professor in the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. She is also the Deputy Dean for Curriculum for the Crown Family School.
She is Associate Editor of Health Policy for the American Journal of Public Health and was the Editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy & Law from 2010-2016. Grogan is the Academic Director of the interdisciplinary Graduate Program on Health Administration & Policy (GPHAP) at the University of Chicago.
Abstract:
The US government–at local, state and federal levels–invests heavily in all aspects of public health and health care services now and long before the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid. Yet, this substantial taxpayer-funded system is largely hidden to the American public and instead presented as a predominantly private system. Colleen Grogan’s sweeping history of the American healthcare state explains how and why Grow and Hide happened from 1866 to 1965, and details its consequences from 1965 to present.
Grogan argues that patronage politics started the process of hiding publicly funded growth, but hiding growth through federalism, contracting with the private nonprofit sector, and fragmenting administration of the system through multiple agencies at all levels of government embedded the Grow and Hide phenomenon. Moreover, political discourse throughout most of this history intentionally hid government’s role and perpetuated the myth of a predominantly private system. The modern consequences include an extremely expensive, inequitable and fragmented system which encourages profiteering and fails to hold the private sector accountable and reveals public funding for poor and stigmatized groups while hiding public subsidies for middle and upper income Americans.
