Governing Health examines health care policy from a political perspective, describing how Congress, the president, special interest groups, bureaucracy, and state governments help define health policy problems and find politically feasible solutions. William G. Weissert and Carol S. Weissert provide a highly readable and comprehensive synthesis of political science research on how government and private institutions affect the policy process. Extensive reviews of the policies that have governed health care since Lyndon Johnson's administration are capped off with a prognosis for the future.

Updates to the fourth edition of Governing Health include - new examples and theory perspectives- recent statistics- discussion of the 2010 Obama health reform