This master thesis is an ideational analysis of health care reform, more particularly, the White paper preparing the ground for the Coordination reform that was implemented between 2012-2016 in Norway. The scholarly literature on developed welfare states points to demographic pressure as a functional demand for reform – a pressure that is harnessed or modified by ideas such as efficiency, fairness, and responsiveness. This interface between different pressures of demands in the form of what the welfare state should be is the motivation for the thesis, which seeks to identify central justifications for health care reform. The research question therefore aimed at examining: To what degree is demographic pressure communicated as an underlying justification of health care reform by policy developers? And how are demographic challenges considered in conjunction with the reform ideologies of New Public Management (NPM) and post-NPM, and the values of the social democratic welfare regime? By operationalizing ideas concerning demographic pressure, NPM and post-NPM, and the social democratic welfare regime from welfare state and public policy literature, the thesis expects to find aspects of these ideas through public documents of health care reform. The background material presents Norwegian health care development and major reforms from around the 1970s until today. Further, the case and the content of the Coordination reform is introduced. The analysis is structured through an ideal type scheme of the different theoretical ideas examined. The empirical findings imply that the theoretical expectation of demographic pressure and health care reform can to some degree be supported, through the analysis of the Coordination reform. Demographic change cannot justify health care reform itself, but the political actors are highly aware of the problem pressure. The justification is especially modified by certain concepts of NPM and post-NPM, as necessary solutions to sustain the welfare state. The values of the social democratic welfare regime are not as eminent as expected, but the values of universalism is sustained as an overall goal for health care reform.