For more than 60 years, health care has been a priority issue for the American people. Evolving and intensifying health care cost and coverage pressures have resulted in multiple rounds of Governmental policy-making. Each decade, the Federal Government has debated and enacted some form of health care reform legislation.

Throughout this period, the uninsured rate in the United States has fluctuated, at times triggering a health care reform process. National Health Expenditures (NHE) – as well as the NHE as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and as a share of overall Government spending – have consistently increased, despite various policies seeking to address the escalating costs of health care.

A review of the last six decades of health care reform likely provides a window into the timing and approach of future reform activity, potentially as early as 2021.