Healthcare: A History

Ryan Manning

Wendy Sumner

English 1020

3/11/08

Healthcare: A History

The healthcare industry has a long and sorted past. How is it that something meant to help and protect the citizens of the United States could be the root of evil? There are man varied opinions on the subject and in order to form your own, you must the history and options for healthcare. And so it begins.

Frustrated by its failure to keep pace with European countries on social issues, the government formed the American Medical Association in the late 1800s. It was not until the early 1900s that the AMA became a major force in American healthcare. By 1910, over half of the physicians in America belonged to the AMA. This meant that, in most cases, medical procedures were no longer free of charge. Basically the AMA is a type of medical union.

Prior to 1910, American hospitals were dirty and crawling with uncontrolled disease. After the AMA established itself as a major organization, hospitals cleaned up and became pillars of health. Due to the reforms that hospitals made, medical procedures became more expensive. The rise in the price of a procedure was necessary in order to keep the hospitals sanitary and in business. As a result, many people could not afford to go to the hospital. Many laborers were sick and could not work. So, the American Association for Labor Legislation organized a nation conference on what was known as social insurance. Despite opposition by American physicians, the health

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insurance movement began to gain momentum. Unfortunately, the advent of the First World War distracted the nation from any such social reform.

Health insurance was largely a forgotten topic until the 1930s. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as a part of his social reform program during the Depression, brought it back into the public spotlight. He wanted to offer it in his Social Security plan, but it was eventually omitted. Thus, private companies began to offer health insurance. The first of these private companies was the Blue Cross organization.

During the Second World War, companies competed for workers by trying to offer better health insurance than the competition. During this same period, Roosevelt asked congress to pass a bill that would express the right to adequate medical care. Later, Truman proposed a plan to promote social healthcare. His plans are deemed to be Communist and un-American by a house subcommittee.

In the 1950s the rising healthcare costs are overshadowed by the outbreak of war in Korea. The fact that a full 4.5 percent of the GNP is now made up of healthcare costs holds no precedence when compared with the lives of American soldiers on a foreign land.

In the 1960s over 700 companies now offered health insurance. All of these companies had their own rates and their own terms. Americans that were unemployed, many of which were senior citizens, were having trouble affording any kind of health insurance. As a result, President Johnson signed the Medicare and Medicaid into existence. These programs diverted some of the tax money into a fund that provided for some of the medical expenses of those in need.

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Richard Nixon renamed the prepaid health programs as health maintenance organizations or HMOs. This provided for federal assistance for the healthcare programs. In effect, this meant that the government now had a stake in the healthcare programs and their profits.

Under the Reagan Administration, healthcare coverage was changed from payment by treatment to payment by diagnosis. The effects of this were misdiagnoses which meant a refusal to pay by the insurance companies. Unfortunately, for many Americans, this meant that if the insurance companies did not feel like paying out, their doctors could just say that there was no real medical emergency.

In the 1990s, inflation caused healthcare rates to skyrocket once again, healthcare reform bills were rejected by Congress, and over 16 percent of the American population had no form of healthcare whatsoever.

Now Americans have plenty of choices for their healthcare needs. There are over forty well know health insurance companies, including the still standing Blue Cross. There are government subsidized healthcare options. These include national organizations such as Medicare and Medicaid, whose futures do not look so steady, as well as local and state subsidized. A good example of local would be the TennCare program. On January 1, 1994, Tennessee denounced the Medicare program and formed its own subsidized medical program. It was meant to provide for the health of poorer citizens of the state of Tennessee if by some chance the Medicare program failed.

None of these programs is perfect of even near it. They all have flaws and they are all subject to different forms of corruption. However, for the time-being, they are the

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options that we as Americans have. We just have to deal with it and accept the fact that change comes slowly. Perhaps it will be better one day or perhaps greed will get the better of us once again. It is up to us to look to the past and decide if the way that things were then is the way that things should be now.

*All information pertaining to healthcare history came from http://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/history.htm.

*All TennCare information came from http://www.state.tn.us/tenncare/news-about.html.