[Contents] 1. Anticipated consequences : historians, history, and health policy / Charles E. Rosenberg. - 2. The more things stay the same the more they change : the odd interplay between government and ideology in the recent political history of the U.S. health-care system / Lawrence D. Brown. - 3. Medical specialization as American health policy : interweaving public and private roles / Rosemary A. Stevens. - 4. Patients or health-care consumers? : why the history of contested terms matters / Nancy Tomes. - 5. The democratization of privacy : public-health surveillance and changing conceptions of privacy in twentieth-century America / Amy L. Fairchild. - 6. Building a toxic environment : historical controversies over the past and future of public health / Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner. - 7. Situation health risks : an opportunity for disease-prevention policy / Robert A. Aronowitz. - 8. The jewel in the federal crown? : history, politics, and the National Institutes of Health / Robert Cook-Deegan and Michael McGeary. - 9. A marriage of convenience : the persistent and changing relationship between long-term care and Medicaid / Colleen M. Grogan. - 10. Rhetoric, realities, and the plight of the mentally ill in America / David Mechanic and Gerald N. Grob. - 11. Emergency rooms : the reluctant safety net / Beatrix Hoffman. - 12. Policy implications of hospital system failures : the Allegheny bankruptcy / Lawton R. Burns and Alexandra P. Burns. - 13. The rise and decline of the HMO : a chapter in U.S. health-policy history / Bradford H. Gray