ABSTRACT
Business has been increasingly concerned about the cost of medical care in the United States since the late 1960s, because as costs increase in the medical sector, costs to business increase. The cost to corporations of financing employee health care has increased more dramatically than other indices of growth. Business reasoned that if this sector of industry could not be rationalized under public control, then perhaps it could be rationalized under private control. The policies of the Reagan Administration in the 1980s reflect the expansion and intensification of the efforts of business in the 1970s to restructure the medical care industry. The policy agenda being developed consisted of two strategies: "the social contract" or corporatist strategy, and the "market strategy" or "capitalism without gloves". The participation of business in public/private sector commissions is not recent nor is it limited to the health policy arena. Policy alternatives were more often determined by business than by the state.
