Wages of Sickness

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.

Author: Beatrix Hoffman
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 01/22/2001
Pages: 280
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.63d
ISBN: 9780807849026

Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2001 pg. 1868
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2001 pg. 119

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