The Politics of Universal Health Insurance

Lessons from the Past? In the early I99os, a remarkable consensus developed that American medical care-particularly its financing and insurance coverage-needed some sort of major overhaul. The near unanimity on this general proposition (Paul Starr, The Logic of Health Care Reform [Knoxville, 1992], has rightly termed it a negative consensus') bridged almost all the usual cleavages in American politics-between old and young, Democrats and Republicans, management and labor, the well paid and the low paid.1 Wre spend more on and feel worse about medical care than our economic competitors do, with nine out of ten Americans (including Fortune 500 executives) telling pollsters that our health system requires substantial change. That was the good news for medical reformers

Health care · Health insurance · Political science · Politics · Healthcare Policy and Management · Law