The Political Economy of Health Care. This course explores the difficulties in simultaneously achieving quality, equality, and economy in health care. In other words: how do we improve health outcomes for all citizens without further expanding an already huge health care budget? Some of the subsidiary questions are: Is American health care really the best in the world? Why do we spend far more than all other countries, even though they cover everyone and we don’t? Is the malpractice liability system—due to high insurance premiums and defensive medicine—responsible? Why can’t the private insurance market solve the problem of coverage? Why are we—still, even after Obamacare–the only country without comprehensive, guaranteed care? Why do we rely so much on our employers to take care of our health needs? Does guaranteed health care violate American values or political culture? Why have doctors and drug companies (until only very recently) been the main obstacles to guaranteed care? What are other political, economic, and institutional obstacles and paths to improvement?

Politics and Markets. This course surveys main pillars of the modern capitalist market system with a focus on their political origins. It starts with an examination of the evolution of private property, the corporation, and banking—the institutional infrastructure of modern capitalism. The developmental analysis then turns to the regulation of important parts of the economy—transportation, agriculture, labor, health care, commercial insurance, and banking—to examine the intermeshing machinery of market society and democratic politics. It turns, finally, to three current areas of conflict, dysfunction, and reform in America: climate action, the financial system, and, finally, democracy itself, challenged as it is by economic and related political inequalities generated by capitalism.

Environmental Politics. This course surveys the politics of the environment in the United States from the emergence of the modern environmental movement in the 1960s until the present. A key question explored is what can be learned from the past to understand the present political impasse on the road to effective regulatory action and, perhaps, to guide political strategy in the future. Among the factors influencing policy outcomes to be explored include American institutions, values, cognitions, economic interests, science, propaganda, popular mobilization, environmental litigation, and more.  A major focus is on climate change and domestic and international efforts to avert catastrophic damages it can bring for future generations