�This new edition makes an extraordinary contribution to the literature of public policy and political science.The
four entirely new chapters provide more content than in any stand-alone book I know on the topics covered. By treating
the politics of Medicare as an exemplary, major initiative inpublic policy, this book provides invaluable insights
for anyone interested in legislative initiatives, especially in domestic policy, but also in foreign affairs.The
final chapter�s reflections on puzzles and patterns has even broader implications valuable to readers interested
in state, local, and national governments, both foreign and American. In sum: an extraordinary achievement.�
-- Graham Allison, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
�Scholars have long regarded the first edition of The Politics of Medicare as the definitive analysis of the political
forces, interactions, and ideas that created Medicare. The second edition promises to assume the same stature as
an analysis of the political evolution of Medicare since its inception. This book will be greatly appreciated by
students of political science as a case study of the political structures, alignments, and ideologies that have
shaped one of our government's largest and most popular social programs. It deserves a much wider audience, however,
because it challenges many of the ideological assumptions that have supported proposals to �reform� Medicare over
the past decade. By debunking these assumptions -- that Medicare could ever become �insolvent� or that it needs
to be �updated� as a managed competition-based program, for example -- Ted Marmor succeeds not only in helping
us understand where Medicare has come from, but also in illuminating where Medicare policy should be going.
-- Timothy Stoltzfus Jost
Newton D. Baker Professor of Law and of Medicine and Public Health, Ohio State University
�Using the past to illuminate the present, Ted Marmor has produced an elegant, precise and scholarly accounting
of Medicare's tangled politics. As usual, Marmor is on top of the news. Fresh struggles loom over not just health
care for the elderly but over the role of medicine in society generally. Appearing at the dawn of new century,
this is a wise and important book that will perform an invaluable service in helping America to confront its demographic
future.�
-- Finlay Lewis, Economics Correspondent, Copley News Service
Walter de Gruyter GmbH and Co. Web Site, June, 2000
Summary
Recognized as a remarkable contribution to the study of health policy since its first publication in 1970, The
Politics of Medicare is both a detailed account of how America came to have government health insurance for the
elderly in the mid-1960s and a commentary on how the American political system dealt with deeply divisive social
issues in the postwar period. For this second edition, Marmor has updated his earlier history, recounted with explicit
analytical focus, and added a retrospective account of the operation of the program in the context of a far larger
constituency of elderly patients and soaring costs for treatment.
Table of Contents
Preface
Preface to the Second Edition
1. The Origins of the Medicare Strategy
2. The Politics of Legislative Impossibility
3. The Politics of Legislative Possibility
4. The Politics of Legislative Certainty
5. Medicare and the Analysis of Social Policy in American Politics
6. Legislation to Operation
7. The Politics of Medicare
8. The Politics of Medicare reform in the 1990s: Budget Struggles, National Health Reform, and Shifting Conflicts
9. The Ideological Context of Medicare�s Politics: The Presumptions of Medicare�s Founders Versus the Rise of Procompetitive
Ideas in Medical Care
10. Reflections on Medicare�s Politics: Puzzles and Patterns
Medicare Scholarship: A Selective Review Essay
Bibliography
Glossary
Index
