Ensuring America’s Health: Publicly Constructing the Private Health Insurance Industry, 1945–1970

“Ensuring America’s Health” demonstrates how public and private power intermingled to embed a specific organizational model—the insurance company model—into the health care system. The dissertation draws on government documents, trade association papers, company archives, and interviews with policymakers, insurance industry leaders, and physicians. In addition to exploring health care politics, it presents a detailed study of major trade associations and ground-level organizations, such as individual insurance companies and physician offices. This history reveals the degree to which policy debates and private sector organization have informed one another; exposes the factors driving US health care costs; and details the origins of the system’s pseudo-corporate structure, which places insurance companies in a supervisory role over physicians and hospitals.