This book provides health care professionals with the essential preparation towards translation of health care policy aims and structure into realities of patient care and community health needs. It provides the background knowledge, frameworks, and principles through which the adequacy of alternative health care system financing strategies can be analyzed. The book is divided into eight chapters. The book begins with a primer on alternative theories of social justice and their implications for the principles of just health care policy. This first chapter considers the moral foundations of rights to health care in accordance with five alternative social justice frameworks: Libertarianism, Utilitarianism, Marxism, Liberalism, and the Capabilities Approach. The next four chapters then provide a descriptive and critical analysis of the history of the U.S. health care system, the contemporary organization of health care with respect to health care financing and health care services, and long-term care of the aged and disabled. The next two chapters provide an analysis of health care disparities and the theoretical frameworks that inform our understanding of the social determinants of disparities in health and health care. The final chapter then provides a political and principled analysis of health care reform, with particular attention to the policy aims and structure of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and legislation that has been proposed and might plausibly be enacted to replace it. The book concludes with a health care financing framework that would be in keeping with both the demands of justice as pertains to a social right to health care and the unique social and political context of the U.S. health care system. It is an ideal text for graduate courses in health care policy and disparities, the U.S. health care system in schools of social work, public health, nursing, medicine, and public policy and administration.