I: The Origins And Enactments; 1: The Origins of the Medicare Strategy; 2: The Politics of Legislative Impossibility; 3: The Politics of Legislative Possibility; 4: The Politics of Legislative Certainty; 5: Medicare and the Analysis of Social Policy in American Politics; 6: Legislation to Operation; II: The Politics of Medicare: 1966?99; 7: Medicare’s Politics: 1966-90; 8: The Politics of Medicare Reform in the 1990s: Budget Struggles, National Health Reform, and Shifting Conflicts; 9: The Ideological Context of Medicare’s Politics; 10: Reflections on Medicare’s Politics: Puzzles and Patterns; Medicare Scholarship: A Selective Review Essay