HarryCare In 1948, Harry S. Truman proposed legislation to create a single-payer national health insurance system. They could have called it Harrycare, I suppose. In any case, the idea was very popular at the time, there being no powerful health insurance companies to oppose it at the time. It failed to get off the ground for two reasons: 1) it was opposed by the American Medical Association, a relatively more powerful organization at the time; and, most importantly, 2) the people of the South who feared that such a program would have led to the integration of hospitals and that they would have to use their tax dollars to provide care for certain minorities. Thus, the Southern people, who were among those who had the most to gain from the bill, since they were poor and suffered from woefully inadequate medical care, were most opposed to it and therefore sacrificed their own interests for the sake of their racial prejudice. This is one of the few times in American History when people allowed their own prejudices to be used to suppress their own best interests. I am sure that would never happen today.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 18:50:05 +0000
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