Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Health:
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Patel, K.
Right arrow Articles by Rushefsky, M. E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Patel, K.
Right arrow Articles by Rushefsky, M. E.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati  
What's this?

The health policy community and health-care reform in the US

Kant Patel

Mark E. Rushefsky

Southwest Missouri State University, Missouri

The failure of comprehensive health-care reform during the Clinton administration (1993–4), has been attributed to many causes: structural features of the American political system, congressional gridlock, interest group opposition, President Clinton and his administration, even the ‘system’ itself. This article proposes an additional perspective: the views of the health policy community. Based on the work of Kingdon, Heclo and Walker, we suggest that fragmentation within the health policy community, particularly over policy solutions, was a contributing factor in the failure of healthcare reform. Our survey of health policy elites found that there was substantial agreement on problems of the health-care system coupled with substantial disagreement, based largely on ideology, about what to do about those problems. We also compared health policy elite views with those of the public. We found that, for the most part, the public and the elites disagreed on problems; however, they agreed on incremental changes, some of which were later enacted into law.

Key Words: health-care reform • incrementalism • policy agenda • policy community • policy elites

Health:, Vol. 2, No. 4, 459-484 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/136345939800200408
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?