National Health Insurance in the United States

The United States has been struggling to provide affordable healthcare to its citizens for decades, and a national health insurance plan has been one of the proposed solutions. However, this program is yet to be successfully implemented despite several attempts. This essay explores the history of failed attempts to enact national health insurance in the United States.

The first significant attempt to create national health insurance came in 1912 when President Theodore Roosevelt included it in his Progressive Party’s platform. However, the proposal failed, and subsequent attempts were also unsuccessful. During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to create a national health program but abandoned it due to opposition from the American Medical Association (AMA) and Congress (Hunter, 2019).

In the 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded in creating Medicare for older people and Medicaid for low-income people. However, opposition from the AMA and conservatives in Congress blocked a proposal to provide universal coverage for all Americans. Further, in the 1970s, President Richard Nixon proposed a plan requiring employers to offer their employees health insurance or purchase it from a government-run system (Wilensky & Teitelbaum, 2022). Still, it was yet to make it past Congress. Additionally, in the 1990s, President Bill Clinton proposed a universal healthcare plan that would have authorized employers to provide health coverage to their workers. It was dubbed “Hillarycare” after the First Lady who led the initiative but failed to pass Congress.

Conclusion

Despite numerous attempts, the US has never been able to enact a national health insurance plan. The opposition from the AMA, conservative politicians, and other interest groups has always been a significant obstacle. Although some progress has been made with Medicare and Medicaid, the United States still lacks a comprehensive plan that covers all citizens. The debate over national health insurance continues, and it remains to be seen if future administrations will successfully implement such a plan.

References

Hunter, E. (2019). The Thirty-Year Foundation of the United States Healthcare System: Fee-For-Service in Perspective. The Trinity Papers (2011 – Present). Retrieved May 8, 2023, from https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1079&context=trinitypapers

Wilensky, S. E., & Teitelbaum, J. B. (2022). 2022 Health Reform Update eBook. In Google Books. Jones & Bartlett Learning. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=cc90EAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT7&dq=.+In+the+1970s.

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