BackStory

The following links and documents relate to the BackStory episode “Body Politics: A History of Health Care”, originally broadcast in October of 2009. You can listen to the entire episode here.

All Centuries

• Primary sources on women in the medical field, including letters, diaries, photos, and oral histories
• Dozens of historians weigh in on the health care debate

18th Century

• An early example of nationalized health care: merchant marine hospitals.
• Pamphlet by a Boston minister arguing the merits of smallpox inoculation (1721)
• Medical classics from the Jeffersonian era

19th Century

• “Directions for Preserving the Health of Soldiers,” by Benjamin Rush (1808)
• “Mortality Among Negroes in the Cities,” a report from an Atlanta conference (1896)
• Letters from an early 19th century Virginia doctor

20th Century & Beyond

• Timeline of health reform history
• Origins of  Medicare’s current troubles
• Interview with historian Paul Starr on health reform’s major defeats
• Op-Ed urging president Obama to channel Truman.
• “Historian’s Take” on the roots of the current health care debate

American Presidents on health care:

• Truman (1945, 1948)
• Kennedy (1962, 1962)
• Johnson (on Medicare, 1964, 1965)
• Nixon (1971)
• Reagan (1961)
• Clinton (1993, 1996)
• Obama (2009)