Caring For America (Reaction Paper Sample)

Name:
Instructor:
Course:
Date:
Caring For America
Caring for America is one of the most intriguing books that have graced the American literature. Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein, detail the elements of the historical developments of care work with close reference to the home care workers chronicles. The home care workers were among the group of staffs that were stigmatized and forced to the very bottom of the health care hierarchy as welfare (Boris and Klein, 204). Desperate, the workers struggled in the shadows of the welfare state regardless of the fact that they gave the elderly population a chance to avoid the elements of institutionalization. Majority of these workers were from the African American community as well as other immigrant women and they were lowly paid. The authors illustrate the ways in which social policies and laws have been the cutting edge to shape up the medical system in America. Their argument is that health care is a basic right to every American. At the same time, those that are providing this care to the population have to be recognized and awarded proper wages for their services and devotion to the public. Health care is one of the most sensitive sector of the economy and affect all of the other sectors directly or indirectly. The development of the health care sector has been marred by the social stigmatization and some forms of indignation. Most of the people that worked in the home care system had to bear with the minimum wages possible. Socially they were taken as offering a service that was as important at the time. However, their contribution was the saving the economy a lot of money and the workers were becoming self reliant. Most of the legislators did not recognize the aspect of contribution apart from a few. The home workers were giving the society a service that was more than they were getting paid for in the end.
In one of the paragraphs from the book, Boris and Klein (2012) illustrate clearly the view of the home workers and the nature of their work. This is a paragraph that demonstrates the subtle meaning of the entire book and the primary theme of the authors. It bring out the importance of the home workers to the nations and certainly to the health sector and also captures with great detail yet with very few words the state of the situation.
“Care workers themselves embraced the difference arguments about the labor of care that we have encountered in these pages: that their work is of social and economic value, that it is a calling based on love and service, that their labor produces larger public goods” (Boris and Klein, 224).
This is an echo of the struggles that the home workers had to endure as they fought for the recognition that they deserved. From this passage, the authors are clear about the social and economic value that the services rendered were worth. That the workers took their work seriously and felt that it was a calling and a service to humanity. However, the same services...