National Health Insurance and the Politics of Race in the United States, 1945-52.

Examinations of the failure of national public health insurance reform in the United States in the immediate postwar period (1945-52) make reference to various explanatory factors including, most notably, the power of opposition interest groups such as the American Medical Association and the role of voluntary insurance in limiting the political prospects for public health insurance. Each interpretation makes an important contribution to understanding the fate of national health insurance proposals in this period. However, the dynamics generated by the politics of race were a crucial element contributing to the demise of national public health insurance in the immediate postwar period. Consideration of these dynamics is a necessary element in fully understanding the failure of national health insurance at this critical juncture in the development of public health insurance in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]