It ' s the Institutions , Stupid !

We argue that the United States does not have comprehensive national health insurance (NHI) because American political institutions are biased against this type of reform. The original design of a fragmented and federated national political system serving an increasingly large and diverse polity has been further fragmented by a series of political reforms beginning with the Progressive era and culminating with the congressional reforms of the mid1970s. This institutional structure yields enormous power to intransigent interest groups and thus makes efforts by progressive reformers such as President Clinton (and previous reform-minded presidents before him) to mount a successful NHI campaign impossible. We show how this institutional structure has shaped political strategies and political outcomes related to NHI since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Finally, we argue that this institutional structure contributes to the antigovernment attitudes so often observed among Americans. American constitutionalism goes beyond the general idea of a government of laws. It includes specific modern concepts of limited government and, accordingly, specific kinds and techniques of limitation. It holds that these are essentially embodied in the written Constitution, which is the fundamental law that limits ordinary government (Diamond 1981: 100). By the time this essay is published, both pundits and scholars will have analyzed and reanalyzed the failure of the Clinton health care plan. The most obvious explanations have already been offered. They blame PresiThe authors thank Joseph White, Mark Peterson, Steve Smith, Caroline Tolbert, and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments on earlier drafts. Journal @Health Politics, Policy andLaw, Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer 1995. Copyright