Health Policy Report: Medicare's New Benefits: ''Catastrophic'' Health Insurance?

p Case Study

Healthcare Policy Report : Medicare 's New Benefits Catastrophic Health Insurance

Case Study

Introduction

Healthcare policy , like most policy is not always easy to pass through all the channels and actually come out as law . In fact , it may go through all of the stages , only to end up being sent back for revision or killed all together . This paper will talk about the process that the Catastrophic Coverage policy took

Catastrophic Health Insurance

All policies have a history starting with the initial formulation and ending

with killing or passing . The bill evolves and changes throughout its way through Congress . There are cases in which the bill is repealed modified and starts the process again . Most of the them take a great deal of time , pass through more than one committee and congress itself and is modified beyond recognition and this is what happened to the Bowen Bill

The Bowen Bill began in 1987 and was put forth by Otis Bowen because of financial devastation he had seen happen because of illness . He and others were concerned about the gaps in Medicare at the time (case study . This was what appeared to be a good bill and Bowen managed to convince President Reagan to support it . The bill went to Congress . From here the bill took what appears to be a fairly normal trek through Congress though the outcome is not always the same (Chap . 5

During the policy formulation phase (Chap 9 ) the President sent the bill to...