Chapter 17: Policymaking for Health Care, the Environment, and Energy Vocab

Health Maintenance Organization (HMO)

Organization contracted by individuals or insurance companies to provide health care for a yearly fee. Such network health plans limit the choice of doctors and treatments. More than half of Americans are enrolled in health maintenance organizations or similar programs. 

National Health Insurance

A compulsory insurance program for all Americans that would have the government finance citizens’ medical care. First proposed by President Harry S. Truman. 

Medicare

A program added to the Social Security system in 1965 that provides hospitalization insurance for the elderly and permits older Americans to purchase inexpensive coverage for doctor fees and other medical expenses.

Medicaid

A public assistance program designed to provide health care for poor Americans and funded both the states and the national government.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The largest federal independent regulatory agency, created in 1970 to administer much of U.S. environmental protection policy. 

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA):

Passed in 1969, the centerpiece of federal environmental policy, which requires agencies to file environmental impact statements. 

Environmental impact statement

A detailing of a proposed policy’s environmental effects, which agencies are required to file with the EPA every time they propose to undertake a policy that might be disruptive to the environment. 

Clean Air Act of 1970

The law aimed at combating air pollution by charging the EPA with protecting and improving the quality of the nation’s air.

Water Pollution Control Act of 1972

A law intended to clean up the nation’s rivers and lakes by enabling regulation of point sources of pollution.

Endangered Species Act of 1973

A law requiring the federal government to protect all species listed as endangered.

Superfund

A fund created by Congress in 1980 to clean up hazardous waste sites.

Global warming

The increase in the earth’s temperatures that, according to most scientists, is occurring as a result of the carbon dioxide that is produced when fossil fuels are burned, collecting in the atmosphere and trapping energy from the sun.