The Health Care System in a Place Like Pittsburgh

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Strikes in a few of those contract cycles, thay, they win a lot of gains on the health care side. By 19 50, the 19 59 strike, by the time it's settled, steel workers make no contribution to their premiums. And so this generates political pressure to pass what would become medicare and medicate. But i think what's important about those programmes is that they don't displace in any they can a corps, public private bargain that's driving the growth of the health care system. They don't interfere with it. They have the government step in instead for people who cannot get it through their jobs.

Historian Gabriel Winant discusses The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America. It's a fascinating study of the emergence of the service sector and a new working class out of the wreckage of deindustrialization through the story of the rise and fall of unionized steel in Pittsburgh and its replacement by a massive hospital industry. Listen to my past interview with Winant on the social worlds that make US politics and how that sociality is rooted in the economy, carceral state, social media, religion, and more thedigradio.com/podcast/the-social-question-with-gabriel-winant Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet, by David Carlin and Nicole Walker rosemetalpress.com/books/the-after-normal