Polarization, Politics, and Health in the United States

Contributors to this special issue examine how partisanship and polarization—which are at their highest in 150 years—shape health policy and politics in the United States. Highlighting examples such as the Affordable Care Act and the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors explore how political struggles over health care laws are fought on increasingly partisan laws; how partisan conflict reshapes a law's implementation and post-enactment political trajectory; how polarization expands the scope of conflict to a wider set of institutions and issues; how partisanship shapes Americans' health behaviors and, in some cases, impacts their health outcomes; and how partisanship can widen differences in state health policies.

Contributors: ?Colleen Dougherty Burton, Timothy Callaghan, Alessandro Del Ponte, Alva O. Ferdinand, Breeze Floyd, Erika Franklin Fowler, Shana Kushner Gadarian, Chloe Gansen, Alan S. Gerber, Sarah E. Gollust, Sara Wallace Goodman, Marc J. Hetherington, Daniel J. Hopkins, Neil A. Lewis Jr., Alee Lockman, Josh McCrain, Adrianna McIntyre, Isaac D. Mehlhaff, Steven T. Moore, Matt Motta, Rebekah H. Nagler, Markus Neumann, Jeff Niederdeppe, Jonathan Oberlander, Eric M. Patashnik, Danielle Pavliv, Thomas B. Pepinsky, Aakriti Shrestha, Matías C. Tarillo, Kristin Lunz Trujillo, Ayelén Vanegas, Jielu Yao