by Mathias Scriptor

Created on: June 09, 2010

The first notable effort to enact legislation in regard to health care in the United States of America had its inception in the Progressive Era on the platform of 1912 Presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt (Hoffman, 2003). Roosevelt, modeling his position after the sweeping socialist movements in Europe, believed in a nationalized health-care system in which the government aided the citizen in paying health-related costs.  As the devastation of the Great Depression reigned supreme throughout the United States during the 1930s, industries and citizens alike felt the pinch of lessening funds and job insecurity, respectively. The brutal conditions of the Depression created a climate perfect for an experiment that would shape the future in health care: the prepaid health plan. 

Health care reform takes center stage again in 1945, seven months into the presidency of Harry S. Truman. Truman proposed a Social Security expansion bill - co-sponsored by Senators Robert Wagner and James Murray, and Representative John Dingell - which would institute a federally operated health care program in which any citizen of the United States could pay into a program with the reassurance of quality medical care at the expense of the federal government. Truman’s proposal was met with stiff resistance from the American Medical Association (AMA), who called Truman’s staff “followers of the Moscow party line”; effectively playing upon the general public’s overwhelming fear of communism. Ultimately, the bill failed due to the aforementioned reason, as well as the onset of the Korean War, which required all of President Truman’s focus and effort (Peon, M 1989).  

The previous fifty years of health care reform culminate in arguably the most controversial and important piece of legislation passed in the history of the United States: Medicare and Medicaid. On July 30, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson signed H.R. 6675, a bill bolstering Social Security, into law. Contained in H.R. 6675 was the establishment of a program which paid for the health insurance of aged people, disabled veterans, and survivors (Condensed Summary of Major). In addition to Medicare, H.R. 6675 provided for the creation of a program in which low-income or disabled people could receive federal aid in regard to health care; effectively creating the system now known as Medicaid (The Kaiser Commission, Appendix 1).

In 1993, President William Jefferson Clinton unveiled a plan to extensively reform health care. Clinton’s plan was based around universal coverage through a strictly regulated private market. In the following year, intense lobbying by interest groups, negative portrayals in the media, and congressional distraction contributed to the proposals’ ultimate failure (New York Times, A History of Overhauling). Just three years later, in 1995, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which insulated the American public, especially those with preexisting conditions, from being denied coverage by insurance firms. In addition, HIPAA protected the public from employer discrimination based on health related issues ("Portability of Health"). 

Most recently, President Barack Obama centered his campaign on domestic policy; most of which revolved around health care reform. On Christmas Eve 2009, the 111th Congress formally passed the Affordable Health Care for America Act, a sweeping bill that apportions $871 billion for health insurance to American families (Lieb, A 2009). Since that time, the joint committee of both Representatives and Senators compromised on the bill, which was signed into law by President Obama on March 30, 2010.

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