Future of Health Insurance

Report Outline
New Push for National Health Insurance
Inflationary Factors in Health Insurance
Means of Curbing Increases in Prices
Special Focus

New Push for National Health Insurance

A new push toward government-mandated national health insurance, an all-but-forgotten lost cause of the Truman administration, is gaining force. The new support grows out of widespread criticism of the prevailing method of providing and financing medical care in the nation. Though President Nixon has never reversed the stand in opposition to compulsory health insurance that he voiced during the 1968 election campaign, his administration has begun to take account of pressures for it.

Since taking office the President has described the nation's health-care problem as “much worse than I realized.” The United States faces a “massive crisis” in medical care needs in the next two or three years, he said on July 10, 1969, “unless something is done about it immediately.” Robert H. Finch, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, predicted on Jan. 10, 1970, that before the end of the decade the nation will have some form of national health insurance from a mixture of private and government programs. Surgeon General Jesse L. Steinfeld told Congress that he believed America was moving toward a national health program and it was “our duty” to prepare for it now.

Pressures for Changes in Health-Care System

“Nobody expects a national health insurance law to be enacted this year,” Business Week magazine commented Jan. 17, 1970. “But there is a chance that first steps will come in time for the 1972 elections.” At least four congressional committees are expected to give consideration in the 1970 session to health issues that have some bearing on the future of national health insurance. They are the House Ways and Means Committee; the Senate Finance Committee; the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, a unit of the Judiciary Committee; and the Senate Health Subcommittee, a unit of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee. Rep. Wilbur D. Mills (D Ark.), chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, has announced no plans to hold hearings on health insurance matters. But he is committed to write new welfare legislation and to look again into the financing of Medicare—areas of study that might be broadened to include ideas for a national plan of health insurance.