ABSTRACT
The rising costs of health care and the increase in underinsured and uninsured low-income citizens, along with the shortcomings in Medicare and Medicaid, generated a new round of thinking about general reforms in the early 1990s. There were several small changes in government support for health care in the late 1990s and early 2000s that were acceptable to, or actively encouraged by, the corporate community and the Republican-dominated Congress. Although the major health-care reform proposed by Nixon and the corporate moderates in 1974 was not passed, there were several changes in laws and circumstances over the next 19 years that prepared the way for another effort at reform in 1993. After that attempt by President Bill Clinton failed, still further small changes in the ensuing 15 years set the stage for the eventual passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
