This book explores how government makes health policy. Most health care
in the United States is delivered by the private sector, but because public policy
pays for and regulates so much of it, health policy is vitally important. Moreover,
private payers for health care tend to mimic the payment approaches of
public policy, so public policy’s reach extends even further into the private
portion of health care policy. For this reason, and because so much of health
care is outsourced and becomes the income stream of private sector providers,
claims processors, makers of health care products, and others, private
interest groups have a huge stake in public policy and fi nd it a good bargain
to spend rather lavishly on lobbying and other strategies aimed at infl uencing
public health care policy.