TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cutler,David
AU  - Gruber,Jonathan
TI  - Health Policy in the Clinton Era: Once Bitten, Twice Shy
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8455
PY  - 2001
Y2  - September 2001
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8455
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8455.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David M. Cutler
Department of Economics
Harvard University
1875 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/496-5216
Fax: 617/496-8951
E-Mail: dcutler@harvard.edu

Jonathan Gruber
MIT Department of Economics
E52-355
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8892
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu
AB  - This paper reviews the formation and outcomes of health policy making during the Clinton Administration. We begin by reviewing the state of the health economy at the dawn of the Clinton era. We then review the promise and pitfalls of the Health Security Act, and its implications for all health policy that followed. We then turn to discussing accomplishments and failures in a variety of other areas of health policy: coverage expansions; insurance market regulation; Medicaid reforms; long term care; tobacco regulation; and other public health. We conclude that the dramatic failure of the HSA led to a very cautious and incremental approach to health policy making in subsequent years, but that viewed from the perspective of that that low point the health policy gains in the Clinton years were actually quite substantial.
ER  -