The American Health Care System

Abstract

Six times in the 20th century, America has flirted unsuccessfully with national health insurance legislation — the provision of medical care to all citizens. Instead, policy makers have allowed subsidies to finance part of private health insurance by exempting employer-paid premiums from taxation. The government has also provided or funded services for groups deemed particularly vulnerable or entitled to them —Native Americans, migratory workers, other categorically defined poor people, veterans of military service, the permanently disabled, people with end-stage renal disease, and all elderly people. Medicare, which provides the nation's elderly with ready access to short-term medical services, represents the . . .