What role does early American history have to play in the quest for Universal Health Coverage in the U.S. during the 20th century?

Fiona Nelson-Lafuse

ENG122

Emily Fancy

18th February 2013

INTRODUCTION The topic question for this research paper is, “Most developed countries have universal health coverage. Why doesn’t the United States have universal health coverage? There have been repeated attempts by many different legislators over the past 150 years to introduce some form of universal health coverage to this country; and given the successive failures, it seems crucial to investigate early American history to uncover the origins of this steadfast resistance to universal health coverage; and gain an understanding of the impact those early citizens have had from the time of the Constitution on down through subsequent generations in their quest to keep universal health care off the legislative table.

Despite the fact that the Constitution does not explicitly provide for universal healthcare, and there has been constant resistance to any attempts to bring it in, during the period 1900 - 1920, it seemed likely universal health coverage would pass into law – then at the last moment it failed. In the period between 1902 and 1965, 19 attempts were made to push universal health care coverage into legislation; and before this paper moves on to examine the role of social, political and commercial interests in these failures, it is important to consider the role of early American history in molding 19th and 20th century American attitudes towards resistance of federal governmental dictates of any kind – including universal health coverage.

METHODS The sources used in this paper are a mixture of Primary and Secondary research. The starting point for locating relevant information was the Ashford University library. A mixture of journals,