Tiffany P. McLeod
College Unbound
Health Care Reform 1900-1950
As early as 1854 the Bill of the Benefit of the Indigent Insane was one of the earliest health care proposals recorded. This bill was established for the insane, blind, deaf and dumb by activist Dorothea Dix but was later vetoed by President Franklin Pierce who didn’t feel the government should commit to social welfare. It wasn’t until after the Civil War that the government established the first system of national medical care with 40 hospitals and 120 physicians. In the first 10 – 15 years to follow the United Kingdom passed the National Insurance Act of 1911 and this as well as other European countries influenced the United States. Early industrial sickness insurance purchased through employers was one influential economic origin of the current American health care system. Back then the insurance wasn’t inexpensive for workers because the people who purchased the insurance all worked for the same company and prevented people who were already ill from buying in. This paved the way for the beginning of third party health insurance in the 1930’s.
With the Great Depression, more and more people couldn’t afford medical services; in 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt had pending social security legislation to include publicly funded health care programs. The American Medical Association was heavily against this pending legislation and President Roosevelt ended up removing the health care provision from the bill. During this time many hospitals began offering their own insurance programs and the first became Blue Cross and soon began selling group health insurance policies to employers who then offered them to employees while charging them a premium. In 1951 the IRS declared group premiums be paid by employers. Public opninion shifted towards the uninsured elerdly population and when Lyndon Johnson was president he saw the need for change in this area. On June 30 1965 the Medicare program was established by legislation.
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