ABSTRACT
Health planning attained prominence through the National Health Planning and Resource Development Act of 1974. The burden of rapidly increasing medical costs, coupled with a growing debate over the effectiveness of scientific medicine, made problems especially acute for government, industry, and insurance companies. The major purchasers will no longer tolerate such haphazard and limitless expansion and are using their leverage to reform the system and contain costs. Health planning is one of several mechanisms by which health care services are rationalized according to the principles of organizational efficiency found in the business sector. Ideology refers to the values and ideas through which people view and interpret the social relations of society. The cost crisis in health care and its inflationary impact on the rest of the economy has forced state intervention. The value of planning in the reorganization of health services is based on its image as an objective mediator of conflicting interests.
