ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief description of the history of health care reform in the United States, so as to provide the framework for the most recent reform: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010. Because of their importance in the whole U.S. health care system, more detail is provided on the history of two specific pieces of reform legislation: Medicare and Medicaid, whose programs are fully described in Chapters 18 and 19. The tension of the attempt to balance the closely held values of the market justice allocation model with the assurances of the social justice model is a theme of this chapter. This chapter concludes with a description and analysis of some of the more important parts of the ACA.
