Sammendrag
Health care reform has been part of the political left s agenda since the New Deal. It was an important and highly visual policy area for the new activist state that emerged after Franklin D. Roosevelt s legislative initiatives that spurred an unprecedented expansion of the federal government. This development was extended and expanded during Lyndon B. Johnson s Great Society.
Clinton s election victory in 1992 was commonly assumed to be a reemergence of popular support for a more active state. However, the demise of Clinton s Health Security Act and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress made many experts proclaim that America would again return to an era of limited government. The voters repudiation of health care reform may have been a rejection of state-activism and the legacy of the New Deal. This thesis will analyze why Clinton s health care reform failed, evaluate the consequences of the health care reform incompletion, and its impact on the New Deal legacy.