The 1993 1994 Debate On Health Care Reform

This work analyses whether the polls in 1993 and 1994 misled US policy makers about the urgency of health care reform. It reviews the attitudes of Americans about their own health care, their concerns about reform of the system, and the views they hold about the importance of the issue.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton presented his Health Security Act to the US Congress. The legislation was intended to reform the nation's health care system while mandating the provision of health insurance to all Americans. A number of factors influenced the genesis and demise of the Act between 1993 and 1994, including presidential politics, opposition from powerful interest groups and waning public support for the legislation. This thesis investigates whether and how race and class influenced debate over Clinton's health care reform proposal. Evidence is presented that race and class affected Clinton's decision to champion healthcare reform, lent credibility to health insurance industry advertisements opposing the president's legislation and influenced public opinion on government-financed health care, and by extension health care reform. These findings indicate that race and class may have played a role in the evolution and resolution of the 1993 to 1994 health care reform debate.

This issues-based reference work (available in both print and electronic formats) shines a spotlight on health care policy and practice in the United States. Impassioned debates about the best solutions to health care in America have perennially erupted among politicians, scholars of public policy, medical professionals, and the general public. The fight over the Health Care Reform Act of 2010 brought to light a multitude of fears, challenges, obstacles, and passions that often had the effect of complicating rather than clarifying the debate. The discourse has never been more heated. The complex issues that animate the health care debate have forced the American public to grapple with the exigencies of the present system with regard to economic, fiscal, and monetary policy, especially as they relate to philosophical, often ideologically driven approaches to the problem. Americans have also had to examine their ideas about the relationship of the individual to and interaction with the state and the varied social and cultural beliefs about what an American solution to the problem of health care looks like. In light of the need to keep students, researchers, and other interested readers informed and up-to-date on the issues surrounding health care in the U.S., this volume uses introductory essays followed by point/counterpoint articles to explore prominent and perennially important debates, providing readers with views on multiple sides of this complex issue. Features & Benefits: The volume is divided into three sections, each with its own Section Editor: Quality of Care Debates (Dr. Jennie Kronenfeld), Economic & Fiscal Debates (Dr. Mark Zezza), and Political, Philosophical, & Legal Debates (Prof. Wendy Parmet). Sections open with a Preface by the Section Editor to introduce the broad theme at hand and provide historical underpinnings. Each Section holds 12 chapters addressing varied aspects of the broad theme of the section. Chapters open with an objective, lead-in piece (or "headnote") followed by a point article and a counterpoint article. All pieces (headnote, point article, counterpoint article) are signed. For each chapter, students are referred to further readings, data sources, and other resources as a jumping-off spot for further research and more in-depth exploration. Finally, the volume concludes with a comprehensive index, and the electronic version of the book includes search-and-browse features, as well as the ability to link to further readings cited within chapters should they be available to the library in electronic format.

Pharmacotherapy, as a means of treating drug addiction in combination with other treatment modalities, has received too little attention from the research community, the pharmaceutical industry, public health officials, and the federal government. Medications to combat drug addiction could have an enormous impact on the medical consequences and socioeconomic problems associated with drug abuse, both for drug-dependent individuals and for American society as a whole. This book examines the current environment for and obstacles to the development of anti-addiction medications, specifically those for treating opiate and cocaine addictions, and proposes incentives for the pharmaceutical industry that would help overcome those obstacles and accelerate the development of anti-addiction medications.

Fully updated for this new edition, Health Care Politics and Policy in America combines background and context for the evolution of U.S. health care policy with analysis of recent trends and current issues. The book introduces public policy students to the complex array of health care issues, and health care professionals to the study of public policy. It provides comprehensive coverage of policy issues related to health care at the federal, state, and provider/patient levels, from Medicare and Medicaid funding and managed care to medical liability law and ongoing debates over the beginning of life and end-of-life decisions. Health Care Politics and Policy in America successfully integrates political, ethical, economic, legal, technological, and medical factors in an issue-focused survey of U.S. health care policy. It includes a chronology of health care-policy-related events and legislation from 1798 through 2005, and an appendix comparing medical malpractice tort laws state-by-state.

The patient ease studies collected in this book provide first-hand accounts of health care delivery in multiple settings in a variety of national and local systems. These accounts, focusing on real experiences and real patients, transcend the rhetoric of political debate about health care delivery. The cases offer lessons for how we might draw on the virtues of other health care systems, understand strengths and shortcomings in our current system, and work toward potential improvements. --

Tracking the issues of healthcare reform through the tumultous 1990s, this work opens a window on the changing dynamics of American politics from the Clinton inauguration in January 1993 through the Republican revolution of 1995 and the 1996 presidential race.