Vicente Navarro is a Professor of Health Policy, Sociology and Policy Studies at the Johns Hopkins University and is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Health Services. He has been president of the International Association of Health Policy, and consultant to many governments and international agencies such as the United Nations, UNICEF and WHO. He has received many awards for his scholarship, including the John Kosa Memorial prize.

• Introduction: The Politics of the US Welfare State. 1. The 1980 and 1984 US Elections and the New Deal: An Alternative Interpretation.2. Class Politics and Social Movements in the US.3. The 1988 US Elections - The Primaries: The Rediscovery of the National Health Program by the Democratic Party, A Chronicle of the Jesse Jackson Campaign.4. The 1988 Presidential Election.5. The Welfare State and Its Redistributive Effects: Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?.6. Production and the Welfare State: The Political Context of Reforms.7. Why Some Countries have National Health Insurance, Others Have National Health Services, and the US Has Neither.8. The 1992 Presidential Election and the Clinton Adminstration Policies: The Politics of Health Care Reform.

"The Politics of Health Policy constitutes an important contribution to the debate of a crucial issue. However, the reach of Professor Navarro's book goes well beyond health policy: it is also a powerful and well-documented rebuttal of the many obfuscations which mask the reality of politics in the United States. It offers a sustained and effective challenge to conventional thinking and deserves very close attention." Ralph Miliband "This book should become a very interesting reference in the growing literature of the welfare state. Navarro's way of analyzing health and social policy issues, while well accepted in Europe, is not frequently heard in the US. His is a strong voice of a committed social reformer speaking with the force of an empirical scientist." Professor Goran Therborn, Gothenburg University