Toward an ethnography of the uninsured: Gay Becker's work in progress

Abstract

Gay Becker's following article on the uninsured, submitted to Medical Anthropology before her untimely death in January 2007, was innovative in placing the issue of the uninsured squarely at the heart of her analysis of the U.S. health care system. Becker's novel contribution lay in examining the lack of universal health care in the U.S. as a mode of governance that produced certain subjects--subjects whom the system trained to view themselves as undeserving of care. Interrogating the means by which such a system is normalized, she further showed how a fragmented and discontinuous health care safety net served to contain the problem of the uninsured by discouraging them from seeking necessary treatment.