Health Care and Health Care Reform

Just about everyone has heard the words, “your health is everything.” In American politics health care and health care reform is the “everything” on the domestic issue agenda. Health care has rocketed to the top of the policy concerns of the American people and has become an issue that is central to electoral politics and partisan competition. In many respects the health care issue is a perfect storm of challenges for the American political system and indeed for all the major players that make up the health care industry from hospitals to doctors to insurance companies to patients. Americans take great pride in their health care system, and many of them have come to expect that health care should be viewed as a basic right, even though its costs are skyrocketing. But their pride in the health care system and their view that they should be entitled to quality care, no matter the cost, has run up against the

realities of the marketplace and the fact that their system is not without its limitations and breakdowns. As we shall see, much needs to be done to fix the U.S. health care system, and major disagreements continue on how to fix it.