Health Insurance in Historical Perspective, I: Foundations of Historical Analysis

Abstract

This article introduces the history of ideas about American health policy and especially health insurance. It opens with the discussion of several historical frameworks and provides elements of a taxonomy of both researchers and advocates of various forms of health insurance. It then describes the early history of thought and advocacy in the context of the social politics that emerged in the early-twentieth century and persisted until the late-1960s and early-1970s. It takes up underlying notions of social solidarity, their tensions, and their relevance to health insurance. It describes the emergence of a market-oriented perspective and its corrosive effects on ideas about social solidarity. The next article explores the history of market-based health care.