ABSTRACT
In the preface to the 1984 edition of Where Medicine Fails, Anselm Strauss expressed the hope that the national failures in health care, so poignantly covered in the first four editions, would have received more forthright and equitable attention when time for the fifth edition came around. Since then, attention, of a sort, has been paid but with scant results. And equitable distribution of health care remains elusive. The 1993 Clinton “health plan” died aborning, followed by a press postmortem that was almost as lengthy as the bill itself. A New York Times obituary captures the essence of the legislative collapse: “Though unfinished, the history of health care legislation is a striking measure of the complexity of legislating major change in an era of intense partisanship, with a public that distrusts Washington as never before, a campaign technology applied to whipping around voters’ opinions, and news reports that emphasize conflict, not explanation.” 1 Health care reform was a bonanza for pollsters, pundits, number crunchers, lobbyists, and advertising agencies, but did not improve the lot of the people it was supposed to help.
