ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a brief history of the battle for health care policy in the U.S. as a means to place the debate over the ACA into historical context. The chapter is organized by time period, each roughly beginning and ending to coincide with significant changes in national health care policy. To this end, we begin the analysis by examining the early 20th century and the growth of Progressivism to the period of the 1930s and the enactment of Social Security. Our second period covers the time between the end of World War II and the advent of Medicaid and Medicare in Johnson’s Great Society. The third period examines policy activity from the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 to the early 1990s. We then discuss the failed efforts of the Clinton administration to enact sweeping health care reform and George W. Bush’s prescription drug reform. We conclude the chapter with a discussion of the election of Barack Obama and the fight for the ACA in 2009–2010.
