| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Wages of Sickness: The Politics of Health Insurance in Progressive America. By Beatrix Hoffman. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. xvi, 261 pp. Cloth, $39.95, ISBN 0-8078-2588-3. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-8078-4902-2.)

When asked why the United States has the distinction of being the rare industrialized nation without a national health plan, students invariably respond that such a plan would violate our basic values. Beatrix Hoffman's tightly argued and well-crafted study demonstrates that a coalition of powerful groups carefully constructed the image of national health insurance as un-American in the early twentieth century. The book focuses on the first campaign for compulsory insurance, which was waged most extensively in New York State from 1916 to 1920. 1

The book opens with an examination of the various forms of protection available to low-income people during that period, including free dispensaries, immigrant fraternal societies, and private insurance policies; such benefits covered only a minority of workers. The book then describes the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL), a quintessentially Progressive Era organization, founded on the tenets of economic efficiency and expert authority. In 1914 the AALL drafted a model health insurance bill, providing coverage not only for medical care but also for income loss due to illness. Resources were to be provided both by state taxes and by contributions of workers and their employers. . . .

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