“As debate about Medicaid’s future rages in Washington, D.C., and state capitols around the country, Jonathan Engel’s book provides much-needed perspective on how our nation has provided health care to the poor over the years. As he shows, second-tier medicine for the poor and uninsured has been a stable feature of the American health care system, and efforts to close the gap between rich and poor cannot but face an uphill battle.”-Alan Weil, Executive Director, National Academy for State Health Policy
“Medicaid is a vital program, and providing medical care to the poor is a critical issue in contemporary health policy, but there long has been a gap between Medicaid’s significance and academic attention to its historical evolution. There has not been nearly enough scholarship of the sort represented in Poor People’s Medicine, scholarship that sketches out the history of Medicaid, key changes in the program, and, crucially, the development of other medical care programs for the poor.”-Jonathan Oberlander, coeditor of The Social Medicine Reader, second edition
“The book reflects extensive research and abounds with details, and its descriptions of historic events are enlivened by quotations from concurrent observers. . . . There is plenty to learn from Poor People’s Medicine about the successes and shortcomings of our public policies toward making health care available to people who cannot otherwise afford it.”
- Harriet L. Komisar (JAMA)
