Health Insurance Reform

On March 30, 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law the complete package of the Health Care Reform Act, representing a watershed in the protracted debate on public healthcare in the United States. The debate in the United States regarding health insurance reform reaches back to the New Deal policies of the 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt instigated a national conversation on the subject by considering adding comprehensive health coverage to Social Security legislation. Almost six decades later, in 1993, this debate raged again when President Bill Clinton appointed his wife, [Page 204]Hillary Rodham-Clinton, to chair a task force charged with creating a universal healthcare plan for all Americans. Neither President Roosevelt nor President Clinton was successful in instituting health insurance reforms, and ...