Preface The essays that make up this book reflect my reform aspirations, but they do not constitute a reformer's brief. Rather, they represent years of effort to understand the dynamics of American medicine, the political constraints that shape our policies, and the lessons that history and comparative study can offer. They reflect as well the conviction that nations do not solve socioeconomic problems with panaceas. At best, collectivities learn to cope better with the more or less intractable conflicts among objectives, interests, and limited resources and opportunities. Proceeding from that premise, these collected writings address the institutional constraints on our capacity to reform American medicine: the legacy of our history, the character of the ordinary politics that shape fields of medical policymaking, the unusual opportunity provided by a consensus on the severity of our troubles, and the familiar risk that a fragmented policy will confuse the doable with the desirable. (Continues...) Excerpted from Understanding Health Care Reform by Theodore R Marmor. Copyright © 1994 by Yale University Press. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
