Abstract

          Boomerang: Health Care Reform and The Turn Against Government examines one of the principal issues facing Americans at the end of the early 1990s, that is, access to healthcare for all Americans. In Boomerang, Skocpol spotlights the competing sociological ideologies with respect to American healthcare reform. The author considers the roles of stakeholder diversity, voter concerns, special interest groups, big government, political gamemanship, and the impact of these elements on the comprehensive healthcare reform effort. Skocpols riveting prose is based on the primary source material she collected in her research and includes information taken from internal White House memos as well as interviews conducted with Ira Magaziner and Hillary Clinton, the primary architects of the Clinton Health Security Act. Skocpol traces the evolution of healthcare reform from Sen. Woffords campaign in Pennsylvania to the attempt of President Clinton to turn the dream of universal healthcare coverage into federal law. Skocpol outlines the bitter ideological crusade waged against the plan by both Republicans and special interest groups that led to the plans demise. The author examines the rise and fall of comprehensive reform and provides valuable insight into the tangled web of health policy politics, ineffective marketing strategies, and the failure to win over the American voting public for the plan. Her ultimate question was if the American people wanted to achieve these goals, why did the process have boomerang politically on the Democratic Party? A scholar of American social policy, Skocpol contrasts Social Security and Clintons proposed Health Security Act. Americans embraced the former because it meant federally mandated benefits. Its opponents envisioned the latter as a threat to current health benefits and freedom of choice. It offered regulation without payoff and was not embraced by the voters (Fatoye-Matory, 1996).