American Public Health Association. Support for a new campaign for universal health care

APHA policies on universal health care: health for a few or health for all?

The American Public Health Association (APHA) has long advocated the development of a system of universal health care for all US residents. APHA has adopted several policies on this topic that stress the financing of the system of universal health care under a single-payer mechanism. However, this approach has never been adopted by US policymakers. The need for universal health coverage in the United States is growing more acute, and failure to provide such coverage threatens the health status of the public. I propose an alternative approach to the single-payer system that is based on incremental extension of existing coverage mechanisms, accompanied by fundamental reform of the health care delivery system. This approach is in keeping with the traditional methods of policy development in the United States, and I urge APHA to assume leadership in advocating it.

"Health for three-thirds of the nation": public health advocacy of universal access to medical care in the United States

The public health community has made important, original contributions to the debate over universal access to health services in the United States. Well before the decision of the American Public Health Association in 1944 to endorse a health plan encompassing virtually the entire populace, prominent public health practitioners and scholars embraced universality as an essential principle of health policy. Influenced by Arthur Newsholme, C.-E. A. Winslow began to promote this principle in the 1920s. Many others came to justify universal medical care as a corollary of the traditional ideal of all-inclusive public health services. By the 1940s, most leaders in the field saw national health insurance as the best way to attain universal access. For the past 30 years, advocates of universalism have asserted a social right to health services.