Hot Take: The Founders Would Have Supported Socialized Medicare For All

Dr. Jeanne Abrams at the University of Denver thinks she’s on to something

Why the Founders would have supported Medicare-for-all

As the Democratic primary campaign unfolds, health care remains the subject of heated discussion. While the conversation about universal access and government responsibility has followed partisan lines in the 21st century, the idea that government has, could and should shoulder responsibilities to ensure the health and well-being of its citizens is at the heart of our country’s founding.

George and Martha Washington, John and Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and James and Dolly Madison lived in an age where modern medicine was just beginning to develop. Even though they were part of the colonial elite, none were immune to sickness, disease and rampant epidemics, and concerns about both public and personal health frequently shaped the trajectory of their daily lives.

Despite their political differences, they all recognized early on that the economic, social and political health of the American nation clearly was connected to the physical health of its citizens, lessons leaders of both parties should remember today.

OK, so what does that have to do with The Government being in charge of all our healthcare?

The Founders’ personal encounters with illness and tragic loss of family members, including many of their children, made them acutely sensitive to issues surrounding medical treatment and disease. Smallpox and yellow fever epidemics provided the impetus for several early American health-care initiatives. As early as 1777, during the height of the Revolutionary War, John Adams recorded that the Continental Congress had passed legislation that expanded the Army’s Hospital Department. He lamented the fact that more soldiers died of smallpox than British bullets. The frugal New Englander wrote his wife, Abigail, with approval that, “The expense will be great, but humanity overcame avarice.”

Later, after Adams became the second president of the United States, he signed a bill in 1798 “to provide for the relief and maintenance of disabled seamen,” creating the U.S. Marine Hospital Service. It gave rise to a network of hospitals located at sea and river ports across the country, and over the next century it evolved into the national U.S. Public Health Service. The 1798 bill passed following a severe outbreak of yellow fever, as Adams and other politicians recognized that sailors often brought a variety of diseases with them to ports, including smallpox, yellow fever and malaria, and quarantine was sometimes necessary.

Still not to the point of Government generously taxing the living shit of citizens and being in control of who gets what for healthcare

This belief united the founding generation that was otherwise frequently divided over questions about the role of government in American life. For example, Franklin helped found the country’s first voluntary public hospital (financed through a combination of individual private contributions and government funds) and the first American medical school. Washington insisted on smallpox inoculation for all his Revolutionary War troops, as many of the young soldiers had never been exposed to the disease. Despite concerns about ineffectiveness and even the dangerous potential for contracting a severe case of smallpox, which could be fatal, Washington believed such a mandate could protect his troops and help ensure the success of the war effort.

Still not getting there

From the beginning, America’s Founders recognized that government had compelling reasons to shoulder some new responsibilities with respect to ensuring the health and well-being of its citizenry while still protecting individual liberty, an outlook which contemporary Americans from across the political spectrum should appreciate as they search for common ground over a contentious issue that personally affects us all.

Yeah, still not there, and that’s the last paragraph. “Should some new responsibilities” is a far cry from Government being out healthcare controller, eh? This is just a wishful fantasy from a Big Government leftist (who is probably against privately owned firearms and would screech about hate speech and stuff) who can only provide some small examples from a few of the Founders, forgetting that if they wanted government running healthcare, they would have put it in the Declaration Of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. The Founders believed in a very limited role of the Federal Government, and wrote the Constitution on those beliefs.