How involved should the government be in American healthcare? Ronald Hamowy argues that to answer this pressing question, we must understand the genesis of the five main federal agencies charged with responsibility for our health: the Public Health Service, the Food and Drug Administration, the Veterans Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and Medicare. In examining these, he traces the growth of federal influence from its tentative beginnings in 1798 through the ambitious infrastructures of today - and offers startling insights on the current debate. The author contends that until the twentieth century, governmental involvement in health care policy was nominal. With the sweeping food and drug reforms of 1906 and the Medicare amendments to Social Security in 1965, a whole new system of health care was brought to the American public. A careful analysis of the various programs generated by this legislation, however, shows a different picture of pet projects, budgetary lobbying, competitive bureaucracy and discord between the agencies and their opposition. Government and Public Health in America provides an illuminating look at the complicated forces that created these institutions and provokes discussion about their usefulness in the future. Hamowy's thoroughly researched analysis fills a substantial gap in the history of health policy. Economists, political scientists, historians, sociologists and health professionals concerned with the interface between government and health care will find much to recommend in this highly readable account of a fascinating topic.

John Marks is something of a national treasure. Warm, funny, passionate, opinionated and occasionally contrary, he is a man whose life for more than 40 years marched in beat with that of the National Health Service. There is scarcely a medical issue or controversy in which John Marks was not involved. Abortion law reform, the doctors' 1970s revolt against the General Medical Council, the foundation of the Royal College of General Practitioners, countless NHS reorganizations, and the bloody battle over NHS pay beds and the pay of junior doctors are just a sample.Then there was the fierce, principled battle over how the medical profession and the public should respond to the terror of a new disease - AIDS. And the great war that was fought over the Conservatives introduction of market forces into the NHS in the late 1980s and early 1990s - an approach to running the NHS that lives on, reincarnated, under the current Labor government.In all of these John Marks played more than a walk-on part. In many he was a principal actor. For anyone wanting fully to understand the BMA's role in all this, this book is thus required reading. But it is much more than just a dry history of times past. It is laced with anecdote, from the horrifying to the hilarious, and on to high politics. John Marks' account of his life and times provides the tale of a warm, human, liberal and occasionally buccaneering man whose passion for life and causes leaves even those who do not always agree with him eager to count him among their friends.