Federal health policy

“ . . . a constantly negotiated health care system or, more accurately, a series of systems, filled with discoveries and surprises, temporary coalitions, changing rhetoric, new experts, new solutions. Federal policy lurches from one perceived crisis to the next, and consensus is narrow and ever-shifting. Resistance to government in principle is matched by pressures from specific interests for more government intervention, for limited purposes or specific populations. Each care is ‘special.’ This process tends to lead, overall, to an increased federal role by a process of accretion.” (Stevens III, 302).