Arguing for Rural Health in Medicare: A Progressive Rhetoric for Rural America. Working Paper Series No. 75.

摘要

This paper examines how rural health policy is treated in the broader field of public policy, discusses the role of advocacy in developing rural health policy, and suggests ways to make that advocacy more effective. Rural health policy is the laws, regulations, rules and interpretations that benefit or affect health and health care for rural populations. The ramifications of any label that is applied to an advocacy group and its constituency is of tremendous importance. At the outset of the twenty-first century, it is not clear how the rural health advocacy coalition. is viewed by the professional policy world or the public: either as an issues network pressing for fair and equal treatment or as an interest group seeking special advantages. This paper was written to explore the types of claims that rural advocates make, focusing on the context of Medicare policy, and to determine to what extent those claims reflect a central theme of fairness and inclusiveness in national policies versus claims that benefit special interests. The paper also suggests how the rhetoric of rural advocates can be structured to reflect a progressive sense of fairness.