Foreword: Health Care Reform
The Debate Over Cost, Quality, and Coverage
For nearly a century — starting with Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 Bull Moose Party platform — progressives in the White House and Congress have sought to create a comprehensive national health insurance system. President Franklin Roosevelt considered such a plan as part of his New Deal but backed off when confronted with fierce opposition. President Harry Truman failed failed to get through Congress a program for compulsory coverage. In the 1970s, Senator Edward Kennedy (MA-D) began a career-long fight for universal, single-payer health care reform. And in the 1990s, President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton famously led a…
