Read the following ENGAGING THE FUTURE This policy snapshot is unlike the others in parts 1, 2, and 3. Those snapshots related a story about some aspect of policy and the policymaking process. This snapshot invites you to create your own story by engaging the futureto set the path from what is to what will be. Policy, as we have seen, is continually changing. It usually moves in small increments; once in a generation, a sea change occurs: Social Security in 1935, Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, and the Affordable Care Act in 2010. To be sure, other pieces of major legislation have been enacted between those major events. Examples include the initiation of Part D for Medicare and the 21st Century Cures Act, but none of these initiatives move the policy needle to the same degree that the three major policy transformations mentioned here. Likewise, policy ebbs and flows. For example, during one era, the arc of history is characterized by major policy initiatives in the direction of protecting individuals from the cost of care and shifting the cost to the public sector, despite increasing public expenses. At other times, policymaking will flow in the other direction, seizing on