When America Almost Had Universal Healthcare

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel

History, Education, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

February 15, 1935. The American Medical Association, the AMA, is holding an emergency meeting in Chicago. The crisis? The possibility that the federal government is about to pass universal health insurance. Health insurance is a new concept in America at this time, but President Franklin Roosevelt's administration is looking to include it in a package that will include another piece of new legislation - Social Security. The AMA, which represents thousands of American doctors, fears that government-backed insurance could dictate how doctors care for patients, and how much money they're allowed to make. The AMA's resistance is the beginning of a nearly 20-year battle against this initiative. How does the AMA eventually use never-before-seen tactics to fight against a national healthcare program? And how is that program ultimately defeated? Special thanks to Marcella Alsan, Angelopoulos Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Professor of Public Health at the Chan School of Public Health at Harvard. Her working paper on this topic is titled, Why Doesn’t the United States Have National Health Insurance? The Role of the American Medical Association. To stay updated: historythisweekpodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.3	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:35.6	History this week.
0:39.9	February 15, 1935.
0:43.0	I'm Sally Helm.
0:48.9	This room is called the Red Lacker Ballroom.
0:52.1	It's at the Palmer House, a hotel in Chicago.
0:56.4	The walls are, yes, red. It's a kind of dramatic room, but it is also a hotel ballroom, meaning it hosts a lot of meetings. For the American
1:04.2	Railway Engineering Association, the Canning Machinery and Supplies Association, the National
1:10.5	Hardwood Lumber Association.
1:12.9	And today, this room is hosting the American Medical Association.
1:18.7	They represent 100,000 doctors in the U.S., some of whom are in this room, and they are panicking.
1:30.0	This is an emergency meeting, a special session.
1:33.3	They're here to discuss pending and proposed legislation related to sickness insurance.
1:39.9	Today, we'd flip that around and call it health insurance.
1:46.0	In 1935, in the U.S., health insurance is barely a thing.
1:51.0	It's limited to small networks of hospitals that let patients prepay for services, services
1:58.0	they'll hopefully never need.
	...

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