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HEALTHCARE: 40 YEARS AND COUNTING.


Nixon 1969: "We face a massive crisis in [medical care]".

Business Week 1970: "[Healthcare is] the $60 Billion Crisis".

Fortune 1970 : "[medical care is] on the brink of chaos".

Yes, we've been trying to solve healthcare for over 40 years, ever since the 1960s when the cost of healthcare skyrocketed. There are endless reasons why prices skyrocketed in the first place, most resulting from American Medical Association lobbying initiatives (which, in the long run, didn't work out so well for them).

Interestingly, while today's healthcare reform proposals fall along partisan lines, in the 1970s, both conservatives and liberals were frequently on the same page. In fact, consider that in 1970, Donald Rumsfeld, then an advisor to Nixon, proposed a health insurance strategy whereby the federal government would build community health centers around the country. The Nixon administration rejected the proposal as too far to the left. Had Rumsfeld proposed it today, perhaps he would have been publicly labeled a socialist.

Source :

Starr, Paul, The Social Transformation of American Medicine , Basic Books 1982 (winner Pulitzer Prize 1984)

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