ABSTRACT
The scholarship on Medicare over the period since the first edition was published in 1973 has been voluminous. The political analysis of Medicare in operation has been relatively infrequent, almost all article length, and much less connected to the general study of American politics than was the case with the fight over the program's enactment. Analysts of Medicare's politics have been hampered to date by the lack of a comprehensive history of the program's politics. Medicare Now and in the Future distinctively and rightly emphasizes problems with the program that are clear to participants, but opaque to the public. One of the most striking features of Medicare's political evolution is how the ideological cleavage that attended its birth reappeared, in a different guise, more than three decades later.
