Health Insurance in America

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Millions of Americans depend on their jobs for health insurance. But that's not the case in many other wealthy countries. How did the U.S. end up with a system that's so expensive, yet leaves so many people vulnerable? On this episode, how a temporary solution created an everlasting problem. This episode originally ran in 2020 as The Everlasting Problem.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from the Dateline original podcast Murder in the Moonlight.
0:04.7	Join Keith Morrison as he tells the story of a couple murdered under a pale moon
0:09.4	and an investigation that includes four suspects and spans three states.
0:14.3	Search Murder in the Moonlight to follow now.
0:27.6	Music Now. Imagine for a moment, it's the mid-1800s.
0:37.1	We're walking down a long, dimly lit corridor of a hospital in the U.S.
0:44.0	Rows of beds line the walls of a large open room.
0:49.2	We step over a small puddle of water, probably from that leak in the ceiling.
0:56.0	And a few patients lie coughing in tattered clothes.
1:02.0	For most Americans, this is the last place they'll want to come if they get sick.
1:11.6	A hospital was a place where poor people went to die.
1:14.6	Hospitals were not high-tech places by any means.
1:19.6	We didn't really know very much of the things that we know today about how disease happens,
1:24.6	how to keep infection from spreading, how to treat people surgically.
1:28.3	We didn't have the kind of knowledge we have today.
1:31.1	At the time, doctors are still giving patients mercury, a toxic substance, to treat things like
1:36.9	constipation or syphilis, and bloodletting to help balance the body.
1:42.0	People are treated in their own homes, either by someone they know or a local doctor,
1:46.9	but they almost never step foot in a hospital, even for surgeries.
1:51.7	At this point, pretty much no one has indoor plumbing, phones, or cars.
1:56.3	The average life expectancy is around 40,
2:00.1	and more than 30% of children don't make it to their fifth birthday.
	...

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