ABSTRACT
The growing criticism of the providers of medical care was a tacit acceptance of the limitations of the initial concept of vendor payments. Although the inability of the states to control expenditures had thrust cost questions into the center of concern at the national level, the nature and desired extent of "welfare medicine" was due for reassessment. The growing importance of the Senate Finance Committee was a direct result of this lacuna in policy-making. The Senate Finance Committee, in particular, became a powerful substitute for a board of directors for Medicare and Medicaid. The Task Force on Medicaid and Related Programs, chaired by Walter McNerney, president of the Blue Cross Association, had been set up in July 1969 soon after the Senate Finance Committee's critical hearings and in the midst of debates over regulation of physician fees. The "health maintenance organization" (HMO) was, however, perhaps the most politically realistic and shrewd of all proposals offered to the 91st Congress.
