The past two decades have witnessed rapid growth in America's health care spending and the failure of a large number of policies attempting to contain this growth. Although numerous public policies aiming at curbing health care expenditures have been implemented by governments at various levels, most of these policies were formulated to address only parts of the health care system, rather than to reform the entire system. These various policies, taken as a whole, have not been successful in diverting the exponential growth patterns of health care expenditures.