Lori Fritz

Weaving the Safety Net, Strand by Strand: State Health Care Regimes
Fritz’s dissertation examined health care policy at the state level in light of previous work on the historical development of the “private welfare state” in health care. As with earlier studies focusing on national politics, she found that the fragmentation of the health care system into private and public sectors posed significant obstacles to policies intended to increase access to health care. However, state governments were being driven to find new ways to overcome this fragmentation and ensure better health care for their citizens, often through innovative institutional arrangements such as commissions and task forces that are outside the usual realm of politics. Fritz’s study included case analyses of Florida and Pennsylvania - two states that took different approaches toward health system reform.