SimHealth
SimHealth: The National Health Care Simulation | |
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Cover art | |
Developer(s) | Thinking Tools, Inc. |
Publisher(s) | Maxis Software |
Designer(s) | John Hiles |
Series | Maxis Sim |
Platform(s) | DOS |
Release date(s) |
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Genre(s) | Management simulation |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
SimHealth: The National Health Care Simulation, released by Maxis in 1994, is a management simulation of the U.S. Healthcare system produced with assistance from the Markle Foundation. It was produced only for DOS. The game was released during Congressional debates on the Clinton health care plan.
A highly complex simulation, it was generally regarded as difficult. Armed with none of the tongue-in-cheek humor that Maxis' prior games were known for, the only real link to the franchise was the SimCity 2000-inspired user interface. Noel Fritzinger, who with Lyman Orton first conceptualized CommunityViz, says that his inspiration came from seeing SimHealth and wondering if the same concepts could be applied to real-world land-use planning.
Critical reception
Entertainment Weekly gave the game a C- writing "For a vivid demonstration of just how complex — and boring — the health care crisis is, try spending a few hours with SimHealth, which lets you do what Hillary Clinton couldn't: design a successful national health care system."[1]