Public Policy Cornerstones of America’s Financialized Health Care System

I’ve been examining how public policies have facilitated the transformation of America’s health and medical care systems into today’s financialized and commercialized realities. While some new public policies trigger major systemic shifts right out of the gate, others get less attention and take more time to show results. Policies can have predictable or surprising impacts, good or bad. Changes happen not just through new laws, but also through regulations, executive actions, judicial decisions, and more. Over time, memories of them fade and younger folks never learn about how changes happened, taking each as a given.