President Carter was “obsessed with broad public and private health care cost control, and Reagan abandoned that, with the exception of Medicare,” he said. Investor-owned, shareholder-driven, for-profit companies became common in health care for the first time. “No other advanced democracy embraced deregulated health care markets in the way that the U.S. did. It swept through health care as it did every other part of the U.S. economy.”Further explanations for why the nation fell behind in health care outcomes, starting in the 1980s, are harder to come by. “If we could replicate that success in other areas, like obesity reduction, we might close the gap in health care outcomes.”

Source: New York Times June 04, 2018 09:00 UTC