ABSTRACT
International developments in the early 1990s were creating a new world order, one with implications for the nature of globally-generated health problems affecting Americans, and for the organization and financing of American health care. In 1988, Congress established the US Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care, popularly known as the Pepper Commission. The Health Care Reform bills introduced into Congress by the Democratic leadership in May and September of 1991 closely paralleled recommendations of the majority report of the Pepper Commission. When the Clinton Task Force proposals were announced, political conservatives expressed alarm at the degree of governmental regulation involved. The 104th Congress was controlled by the right wing of the Republican party, whose policy agenda included ending deficit spending, reducing taxes, eliminating the federal welfare system and reducing the role of the federal government more generally, instead leaving it to the states to deal with their own social problems.
