Abstract
America has toyed with the idea of national health insurance for decades. In the mid-1960s, the idea was popular enough for a limited form of national health insurance—viz., Medicare—to be enacted. This was followed by a push for a generalized form of national health insurance. In the late 1970s, a number of national health insurance bills were introduced in Congress.1 When none of these bills were enacted, the concept of national health insurance fell into a period of decline, and by the early 1980s, the concept had relatively few advocates.
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Notes and References
For a summary of the most important of these bills, see the Appendix of National Health Insurance: Conflicting Goals and Policy Choices (1980), Feder, J., Holahan, J., and Marmor, T., eds., The Urban Institute, Washington, DC.
Esther, R. J. “Health-Care Costs for Businesses Soared in 1988…,” The Wall Street Journal (henceforth identified as WSJ), 24 May 1989, A2.
“Health Plan Costs Jumped…,” WSJ, 31 January 1989, C20.
Feinstein, S. “Outpatient Care…,” WSJ, 30 May 1989, Al.
“Firms’ Benefit Costs in ‘89 Seen Rising Significantly,” WSJ,11,January 1989, A4.
Karr, A. R. “National Health Plans Intrigue More Employers…,” WSJ, 16 May 1989, Al. Along these lines, see also Ron Winslow’s “National Health Plan Wins Unlikely Backer: Business,”WSJ, 5 April 1989, B 1, and Albert R. Karr’s “Please, Mr. Bush,…,” WSJ, 31 January 1989, Al.
Feinstein, S. “Workers Pay More…,” WSJ, 11 July 1989, Al.
Karr, A. R. and Carnevale, M. “Facing Off Over Health care Benefits,” WSJ, 11 August 1989, B i.
Davis, K. “National Health Insurance: A Proposal,” American Economic Review,79, 349–52.
Waldholz, M. “Pediatricians Back National Health Insurance Plan,” WSJ, 24 July 1989, B2.
“Universal Health Insurance: Its Time Has Come,” (1989) The New England Journal of Medicine,320, 117–8.
Brazda, J. F. (1989) “National Insurance Resurfaces,” Modern Health-Care, 16 June 1989, 36.
Ruffenach, G. “Physician’s Group Proposes National Health Program,” WSJ, 12 January 1989, p. B 1.
See,for example, the section titled “Medical Li censure” in chapter IX of Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1962).
See, for example, my “The Case for Physician-Dispensed Drugs,” Biomedical Ethics Reviews: 1989 (The Humana Press, Clifton, NJ, 1990).
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© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Irvine, W.B. (1991). Can National Health Insurance Solve the Crisis in Health Care?. In: Humber, J.M., Almeder, R.F. (eds) Biomedical Ethics Reviews · 1990. Biomedical Ethics Reviews. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0471-8_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0471-8_4
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