Medical Manpower Issues: Health Policy in Action?

Excerpt

This nation and modern society have become extremely complicated, and it is sometimes difficult to discern where policy-making responsibility lies. There is a national monetary policy and a national defense policy and responsible agencies and officials to conduct them. Yet there is no national health or medical policy, and no discernible agency or official in charge. Instead, health policy, insofar as it exists, is fragmented and pluralistic. State and local governments, professional associations, individual professionals, and a host of public groups join with the Federal Government in asserting their views and their influence.

Rather than through a rational policy-making process,