Brokering Health Policy: Coalitions, Parties, and Interest Group Influence.

A conference paper about the relative contribution of informal communications, formal coalitions, and political parties to the capacity of interest groups to broker changes in health policy. It discusses a theory developed that integrates coalitions and parties into traditional understandings of interest group brokerage through informal communication networks. It also examines the structure of the contemporary health policy domain and presents a case study of how interest groups helped transform Medicare in 2003.