The Wages of Sickness: The Politics of Health Insurance in Progressive America(Studies in Social Medicine)

The Clinton administration's failed health care reform was not the first attempt to establish government-sponsored medical coverage in the United States. From 1915 to 1920, Progressive reformers led a spirited but ultimately unsuccessful crusade for compulsory health insurance in New York State. Beatrix Hoffman argues that this first health insurance campaign was a crucial moment in the creation of the American welfare state and health care system. Its defeat, she says, gave rise to an uneven and inegalitarian system of medical coverage and helped shape the limits of American social policy for the rest of the century. Hoffman examines each of the major combatants in the battle over compulsory health insurance. While physicians, employers, the insurance industry, and conservative politicians forged a uniquely powerful coalition in opposition to health insurance proposals, she shows, reformers' potential allies within women's organizations and the labor movement were bitterly divided. Against the backdrop of World War I and the Red Scare, opponents of reform denounced government-sponsored health insurance as ""un-American"" and, in the process, helped fashion a political culture that resists proposals for universal health care and a comprehensive welfare state even today. |Shows how the issues that prevented passage of the 1915-1920 campaign for compulsory health insurance in New York helped to shape a national political culture that continues to resist proposals for universal health care as ""un-American.

About the Author :
Beatrix Hoffman is assistant professor of history at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

Review :
[This] book weaves the interests of disparate influences such as employers, labor unions, medical doctors, women's groups, and politicians into a fascinating narrative. ("Choice") ÝThis¨ book weaves the interests of disparate influences such as employers, labor unions, medical doctors, women's groups, and politicians into a fascinating narrative. ("Choice") Nicely written and deeply researched. ("Labor History") Beatrix Hoffman has reframed the formative years of American health policy in a most innovative way. (Alan Derickson, Pennsylvania State University)