Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Lessons of Success — Revisiting the Medicare Story

David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P., and James Morone, Ph.D.

President-elect Barack Obama waits to take the oath of office, and as predictably as sap rises in the New England spring, healthcare professionals and policymakers are posing the quadrennial questions: Will this be the time? Have Americans finally elected a president who can repair our ailing health care system?

Each presidential election sends analysts searching for lessons that might be gleaned from past — and usually futile — presidential attempts at health care reform. President Bill Clinton's maladroit effort to enact the Health Security Act in 1993 and 1994 offers a wealth of cautions about how not to manage comprehensive health care change, and for these warnings we refer readers to several pieces of excellent work,1,2,3,4 as well as to President Clinton's own memoir.5/.../

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