Description
Most Americans get their health-care insurance through their employers. But what happens to those Americans who fall outside this system? What happens to the unemployed, the elderly, and the disabled, and to employees who do not receive health insurance from their employers? Who pays for their health care?



Michael S. Sparer, associate professor of public health at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, addresses these questions in the second e-seminar in his six-part series The Politics of Health Care. Professor Sparer introduces Medicare and Medicaid, the two leading public health-insurance programs. Today, Medicare provides health insurance to around 39 million low-income Americans at an annual cost of $217 billion, while Medicaid covers 40 million elderly and disabled Americans at a cost of more than $200 billion. Professor Sparer explores how these programs came to be enacted, looking at the legacy of the New Deal as a counter to America's cultural preference for limited government. Finally, he focuses on each program in detail, explaining how Medicare and Medicaid are funded and administered, whom they aid, and how the programs have evolved since their enactment in 1965.