Faculty First Year Seminars 191HPP1 - Medicare for All: Truman & Ins

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Democrats inside and outside of Congress, and othershave arguedfor the creation of a single-payer, national health insurance program called ?Medicare for All? to provide comprehensive health care coverage for all Americans. Surprisingly, the effort to create a national health insurance program has been around since atleast November 1945. Seventy-five years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first sitting chief executive to advocate for the passage of national health insurance. In this seminar, students will examine thedetails and politics of the effort to pass national health insurance in the late 1940s and why that effort failed. In hindsight, if President Truman had succeeded in passing national health insurance, it isvery likely that American health care would look dramatically different from today.

Freshmen Only