Why, alone among industrial democracies, does the United States not have
national health insurance? While many books have addressed this
question, Dead on Arrival is the first to do so based on original
archival research for the full sweep of the twentieth century. Drawing
on a wide range of political, reform, business, and labor records, Colin
Gordon traces a complex and interwoven story of political failure and
private response. He examines, in turn, the emergence of private,
work-based benefits; the uniquely American pursuit of "social
insurance"; the influence of race and gender on the health care debate;
and the ongoing confrontation between reformers and powerful economic
and health interests.
Dead on Arrival stands alone in accounting for the failure of national
or universal health policy from the early twentieth century to the
present. As importantly, it also suggests how various interests
(doctors, hospitals, patients, workers, employers, labor unions, medical
reformers, and political parties) confronted the question of health
care--as a private responsibility, as a job-based benefit, as a
political obligation, and as a fundamental right.
Using health care as a window onto the logic of American politics and
American social provision, Gordon both deepens and informs the
contemporary debate. Fluidly written and deftly argued, Dead on
Arrival is thus not only a compelling history of the health care
quandary but a fascinating exploration of the country's political
economy and political culture through "the American century," of the
role of private interests and private benefits in the shaping of social
policy, and, ultimately, of the ways the American welfare state empowers
but also imprisons its citizens.