Summary Of The Science Of Muddling Through By Charles Lindblom

In Charles Lindblom article, “The Science of Muddling Through”, Lindblom examines two types of policy making, rational-comprehensive and successive limited comparisons. The first approach Lindblom discusses is the rational comprehensive method to policy making. In theory this method makes perfect sense, but all too often it is not properly applied by our policy makers in the real world. The first issue of defining objectives and values can be very difficult and often causes tradeoffs in public policy. An example used in the article to demonstrate this issue is it is difficult to say with complete certainty that it is better to spend less on education in order to balance the budget. The second issue presented is separating means from ends,

Just about everyone has a different opinion about how healthcare should be handled in the United States. The political circumstances stem from the law makers trying to decide what they think will be best for the country as a whole and the difference of opinions. Healthcare reform has caused some heated debates and a lot of misleading information being given to the public. If a person tries to research the Affordable Care Act the amount of information found can be over whelming. A lot of the information is contradictory, so it is hard for a person to form and accurate opinion about the Affordable Care Act. Since March of 2010 when President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, several provisions of legislation have been enacted. Healthcare reform and especially the Affordable Care Act remains a divisive political issue. Consumers’ opinions vary about the Affordable Care Act with more than half of the states challenging the law in courts (Casey, 2011). The constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is the major political circumstance that surrounds the

Even if the constitutionality of the law is upheld, the fate of health care reform in the United States will not be decided until at least 2012. Healthcare reform will be one of the biggest political issues in the presidential election in 2012. The major lines of argumentation on this issue center on the Interstate Commerce Clause, which grants Congress the power to regulate commerce between states. The Department of Justice believes that health care is a complex interstate industry and the Commerce Clause, together with the Necessary and Proper Clause, gives Congress the ability to regulate it in the Affordable Care Act. Supporters of Affordable Care Act look at cases such as Gonzales v. Raich and point to broad readings of the Commerce Clause, where the Court held that Congress can criminalize the growth and use of homegrown marijuana even in areas where medical marijuana is legal. The twenty-six states that are suing the government over the Affordable Care Act assert that Congress is overstepping the powers of the Commerce Clause, and point to the individual mandate as a characteristic that distinguishes this case from previous ones. The States argue that the act aims to regulate inactivity as opposed to activity. (Schied,