Health care reform is a change to health policies on a national level. Health care reform consists of improving health care and its quality, improving the quality of specialists, and allowing more citizens to receive health care by having little or no cost at all. Americans should care about how health care reform was created, and the adverse effect on the different classes of people. Health care reform was discussed about in the United States by political figures such as President Bill Clinton (1997) when state children health insurance programs were implemented. On March 21st, 2010 President Obama implemented legislation that intended to cover 32 million uninsured people. Health care reform consists of these key parts, setting the agenda, formulating policy, and adopting policy. These procedures were necessary to produce positive outcomes for health care reform. The rules and procedures used to pass health care reform in 2010 were necessary to create these policies.
Setting the Agenda.
The first stage of policy making is setting the agenda. Setting the agenda is a process by which government officials view issues and make a plan of action to resolve the subject matter (Davidson 402). Political agendas are put in motion based on turnover in congress, shifts in public opinion, and election results (Davidson 402). Agendas are propelled forward by policy entrepreneurs (Davidson 402). Policy entrepreneurs (law makers) are individuals within a campaign whose job is to invest most of their time and energy into promoting specific issues and shaping agendas (Davidson 402). Setting the agenda is an important role in policy making (Davidson 402). Without setting the agenda being the first step in policy making health care plans such as the Massachusetts and Clinton plan would be hard to implement. Healthcare reform has been an important issue for many legislatures dating back to the 18th century (Healthcare Reform 515).