Seminar Series Archives

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Scholars in Health Policy Research Program

Health and Social Science Research Seminar
Fall 2005

Reading List


First Session: The Practitioner-Patient Relationship and Its Evolution over Time; Special Focus on Conflicts of Interest

Tuesday, August 30, 10-12 P.M.
Faculty: Neil Smelser, Ph.D.

Required Readings:
  1. Parsons, T., Chapter X of The Social System (Glencoe: IL: The Free Press, 1951), "Social Structure and Dynamic Process: The Case of Modern Medical Practice", pp. 428-479.
  2. Merton, R.K., "The Ambivalence of Physicians," in Sociological Ambivalence and Other Essays (New York: The Free Press, 1976), pp. 65-72.
  3. "Medical Professionalism in the New Millenium: A Physician's Charter", issued by the American Board of Internal Medicine and the European Federation of Internal Medicine, February 2002. Volume 136. Number 3.
  4. Gibbons, R., et al., "A Comparison of Physicians' and Patients' Attitudes Toward Pharmaceutical Industry Gifts," Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2002, pp. 151-154.
  5. Dana, J. and Loewenstein, G., "A Social Science Perspective on Gifts to Physicians from Industry," Journal of the American Medical Association, 2003, pp. 252-255.

Second Session: What Do We Get for Our Health Expenditures?

Tuesday, September 6, 10-12 P.M.
Faculty: Robert Anderson, Ph.D.

Required Readings:
  1. Cooper, R.A., Getzen, T.E., McKee, H.J.&Laud, P. "Economic and Demographic Trends Signal an Impending Physician Shortage." Health Affairs 2002. Vol.21, No.1.
  2. Cutler, D., and Richardson, E. "The Value of Health: 1970-1990." AEA Papers and Procedures. What We Get for Health-Care Spending. Vol. 88, No.2. pp.97-100
  3. Cutler, D., McClellan, M.,&Newhouse J.P. "What Has Increased Medical-Care Spending Budget?" AEA Papers and Procedures. The Changing Market for Health Insurance. Vol. 88. No.2. pp.132-135
  4. Evans, R.G., Baver, M.L.,&Marmor T.R. Why Are Some People Healthy and Others Not. New York, Aldine de Grayter, 1194.
  5. Evans, R.G., and Stoddart, G.L. Producing Health, Consuming Health Care.
  6. Goodman, D., Fisher, E.S., Little, G.A., Stukel, T.A., Chang, C.,&Schoendorf, K.S., "The Relation Between the Availability of Neonatal Intensive Care and Neonatal Mortality." The New England Journal of Medicine 2002, Vol. 346, No. 20. pp1538-1544
  7. Grumbach, K. "The Ramifications of Specialty Dominated Medicine." Health Affairs 2002, Vol. 21, No. 1. pp155-157
  8. Grumbach,K. "Specialists, Technology and Newborns - Too Much of a Good Thing" The New England Journal of Medicine. 2002, Vol. 346, No. 20. pp1574-1575
  9. Wennberg, J., Fisher, E.S.,&Skinner, J.S. "Geography and the Debate Over Medicare Reform" Health Affairs 2002

Third Session: US Social Protection in Comparative Perspective

Thursday, September 8, 10-12 P.M.
Faculty: Jonah Levy, Ph.D.

Required Readings:
  1. Skocpol, T., "State Formation and Social Policy in the United States," in Social Policy in the United States, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 11-36.
  2. Steinmo, S. and Watts, J., "It's the Institutions, Stupid! Why Comprehensive National Health Insurance Always Fails in America," Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer 1995, pp. 329-372.
  3. Esping-Andersen, G. "The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism", in Chris Pierson and Frances Castles (eds.), The Welfare State Reader, (London: Polity Press, 2000), pp. 154-169.
  4. Howard, C. "Sizing Up the Hidden Welfare State," in The Hidden Welfare State: Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United States, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 17-39.
  5. Hacker, J. "Introduction: American Exceptionalism Revisited," in The Divided Welfare State: the Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 5-27.

Fourth Session: Inequality in the Delivery of Health Services: The Special Case of Race

Tuesday, September 13, 10-12 P.M.
Faculty: Neil Smelser, Ph.D.

Required Reading:
  1. Brian D. Smedley, Adrienne Y Stith, and Alan R. Nelson (eds.), "Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Dosparities in Health Care." Report of the Committee on Understanding and Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Chapters 2-4
    pp. 80-179.

Fifth Session: Markets and Market Failure in Health Care

Thursday, September 15, 10-12 P.M.
Faculty: Robert Anderson, Ph.D.

Required Reading:
  1. Akerlof, G. "The Market for 'Lemons': Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" Quarterly Journal or Economics. Pp.488-500
  2. Arrow, K. "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care." The American Economic Review. 1963 Vol. 53, No. 5.
    pp. 941-973
  3. Newhouse, J. "Toward a Theory of Nonprofit Institutions: An Economic Model of a Hospital." The American Economic Review pp. 64-74
  4. Newhouse, J., Beeuwekes Buntin, M.,&Chapman, J.D.., "Risk Adjustment and Medicare." 1999
  5. Pauly, M. and Reddisch, M., "The Not-For-Profit Hospital as a Physician's Cooperative." The American Economic Review. 1973Vol. 63, No. 1. pp87-99

Sixth Session: US Health Care Reform in Comparative Perspective

Tuesday, September 20, 10-12 P.M.
Faculty: Jonah Levy, Ph.D.

Required Reading:
  1. Pierson, P., "The New Politics of the Welfare State." World Politics, Vol. 48, January 1996, pp. 143-179.
  2. Moran, M., "Three Faces of the Health Care State," Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Vol. 20, No.3, Fall 1995, pp.767-781.
  3. Grand, J., "Knights, Knaves or Pawns? Human Behavior and Social Policy," Journal of Social Policy, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1997, pp.149-169.
  4. Giaimo, S., "Who Pays for Health Care Reform?" in Paul Pierson (ed.), The New Politics of the Welfare State, (Oxford University Press, 2001) , pp. 334-368.
  5. Hacker, J., "Privatizing Risk without Privatizing the Welfare State: The Hidden Politics of Social Policy Retrenchment in the United States," American Political Science Review, Vol. 98, No. 2,
    May 2004, pp. 243-260.
  6. Hacker, J., "Medicare Plus: Increasing the Health Care Coverage by Expanding Medicare," in Covering America: Real Remedies for the Uninsured, Washington, DC: Economic and Social Research Institute, 2001, pp. 73-100.

Seventh Session: What is Medical Anthropology? A Brief History of a Subdiscipline, and Some Contemporary Reflections on the Thing through the Study of Transplant Organ Markets

Thursday, September 22, 10-12 P.M.
Faculty: Lawrence Cohen, Ph.D., Department of Anthropology

Readings to be distributed later

Eighth Session: Psychology and Economics

Tuesday, September 27, 10-12 P.M.
Faculty: Matthew Rabin

Readings to be distributed later

Ninth Session: The Politics of Regulation

Thursday, September 29, 10-12 P.M.
Faculty: Robert Kagan, Ph.D.

Required Reading:
  1. Braithwaite, "The Nursing Home Industry." In Michael Tonry&Albert Reiss, Jr., Beyond the Law: Crime in Complex Organizations. Vol. 18, Crime and Justice (Univ. Chicago Press, 1993) pp. 11-54.
  2. Kagan, R. "Adversarial Legalism: The American Way of Law (Harvard Univ. Press, 2002) Ch. 7, The Tort Law System pp. 126-155 plus endnotes.
  3. Kagan, R.&Skolnick, J. "Banning Smoking: Compliance Without Enforcement," in Robert Rabin&Stephen Sugarman, eds. Smoking Policy: Law, Politics and Culture (Oxford Univ. Press, 1993) pp. 69-87.
  4. Kagan, R. "Regulators and Regulatory Processes." In Austin Sarat (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Law and Society.
    pp. 212 - 230.

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