Medical Scarcity: A Tour

The so-called richest country in the world, the U.S. produces an abundance of pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, and specialty care. At the same time, access to these resources is stratified across lines of race and class. Despite the plenitude, how do we puzzle over the historical lack of healthcare access in the U.S. and, thus, the manufactured scarceness of that care? How do we make sense of the paradox of abundance coexisting with impoverishment? Through a tour of historical perspectives and specific cases, Professor George Aumoithe will explore how natural and political disasters over time have revealed the U.S. healthcare Leviathan’s rotten underbelly, showing how medical scarcity is created and operates.