American health politics, 1970 to the present: some comments.

This article reviews the attempts of the 1970s and 1980s to rationalize health care provision in the United States. It critically discusses the contorted debate between competition and regulation as a means of controlling health care costs. The second part of the article takes up Eli Ginzberg's contentions about American health care. We agree that the United States has not been able to control medical inflation because it lacks the necessary condition of concentrated finance. But we present evidence from public opinion polls in the 1970s and the 1980s that challenges Professor Ginzberg's contention that "there is no evidence that the American people want to change [their] system" of medical care.