Members of the Rekindling Reform Steering Committee collaborated over a period of several months in early 2002 to develop a set of principles and goals to help guide and define the group's efforts for comprehensive health care reform in the United States. The next step is to circulate this document to the sponsoring organizations for their approval. This document is, then, a work in progress, subject to revision as the process of discussion and review continues. These principles provide a sense of the lessons members of the Rekindling Reform Steering Committee have learned from their study of other countries' universal health care systems, and how those lessons have informed their thinking about the nature of the health care reform needed in United States.