When America Almost Had Universal Healthcare

HISTORY This Week

February 15, 1935. The American Medical Association, the AMA, is holding an emergency meeting in Chicago. The crisis? The possibility that the federal government is about to pass universal health insurance.

Health insurance is a new concept in America at this time, but President Franklin Roosevelt's administration is looking to include it in a package that will include another piece of new legislation - Social Security. The AMA, which represents thousands of American doctors, fears that government-backed insurance could dictate how doctors care for patients, and how much money they're allowed to make. The AMA's resistance is the beginning of a nearly 20-year battle against this initiative.

How does the AMA eventually use never-before-seen tactics to fight against a national healthcare program? And how is that program ultimately defeated?

Special thanks to Marcella Alsan, Angelopoulos Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Professor of Public Health at the Chan School of Public Health at Harvard. Her working paper on this topic is titled, Why Doesn’t the United States Have National Health Insurance? The Role of the American Medical Association.

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