Medicare Politics: Exploring the Roles of Media Coverage, Political Information, and Political Participation

by Mebane,Felicia

• ISBN13: 9780815337171
• ISBN10: 0815337175
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-10
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Medicare Politicsexamines how media coverage, political information, and political participation affect Medicare policy choices. This book is an excellent reference for political science literature concerning the impact of media, the roles of political information with respect to public opinion, and political participation. Each chapter provides analysis that expands political science and health services research by testing political science questions in a way that further our understanding of a significant health policy program affected by the political process: Medicare. The introduction ties the chapters together and discusses the importance of understanding Medicare politics as the impending retirement of the baby boom generation forces policymakers to grapple with how Medicare will support future generations. The first chapter shows how Medicare coverage varied throughout the 1995 debates concerning Medicare reform and links coverage with public opinion about policymakers. The second chapterdemonstrates how knowledge of the Medicare program affected the public's support for Medicare reform options in 1995. The final chapter examines the impact of the political participation and mobilization of Medicare beneficiaries in recent presidential elections.Medicare Politicsends with a discussion of implications for future Medicare reform debates.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
List of Tables and Figures	xi
Media Coverage	1	(30)
Setting the Stage	2	(3)
Public Opinion Towards Political Leaders Debating Medicare Reform	5	(2)
Linking Critical Tone in Media Coverage of Medicare with Public Opinion	7	(1)
Hypothesis	8	(1)
Data and Methods	8	(2)
Key Concepts and Variables	10	(10)
Results	20	(5)
Discussion/Implications	25	(6)
Political Knowledge	31	(38)
Explaining the Role of Information in Public Opinion Formation	32	(4)
Evidence of the Effect of Political Information	36	(2)
Hypotheses and Methods	38	(4)
Data	42	(1)
Descriptive Results	43	(9)
Analytical Results	52	(9)
Discussion/Implications	61	(8)
Political Participation	69	(38)
Defining ``Political Participation'' and ``Older Americans''	71	(1)
What We Know about the Political Activity of Older Americans	72	(1)
Modeling Political Participation	73	(6)
Medicare as an Emerging Election Issue	79	(2)
Medicare in the 1996 Presidential Election	81	(2)
Hypotheses	83	(1)
Data and Methods	84	(2)
Results	86	(14)
The Impact of Redefining ``Older Americans''	100	(1)
Discussion/Implications	100	(7)
Conclusion	107	(2)
Appendix for Chapter Two	109	(20)
Appendix for Chapter Three	129	(38)
Bibliography	167	(8)
Index	175