Professors Marmor and Klein seek to improve the understanding of health care policymaking while contributing to a more informed discussion of options among academics and policymakers. Building on their earlier work, they will focus on the politics of decision making in the widest sense: the constraints and opportunities created by existing institutions, administrative capacities, and the structure of interests in the health policy arena. The project will provide a framework for analyzing the dynamics of the policy process and categorizing health care issues. The investigators will draw on the findings of other health policy studies and use them to test the framework. Among the specific topics to be addressed are the political struggles over systemic reform, rationing, prevention, professional accountability, consumer empowerment, health panics, and moral crusades.

Professor Marmor began his public career as a special assistant to Wilbur Cohen (Secretary of HEW) in the mid-1960s. He was associate dean of Minnesota's School of Public Affairs, a faculty member at the University of Chicago, the head of Yale's Center for Health Services, a member of President Carter's Commission on the National Agenda for the 1980s, and a senior social policy advisor to Walter Mondale in the Presidential campaign of 1984. He has testified before Congress about medical care reform, social security, and welfare issues, as well as being a consultant to government and non-profit agencies.