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Evolution of Health Insurance

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Evolution of Health Insurance System in US
All Americans should have affordable, quality healthcare coverage. Most Americans agree that our healthcare system needs reform. That is primarily because 45.7 million Americans are without health insurance. The primary issues are access to healthcare, and affordability of healthcare. The burden of healthcare change should be fairly shared among all stakeholders. Government, the private sector, individuals, and the groups that represent them each must share in the responsibility for finding an affordable solution to healthcare reform [ (Humana, 2012) ].
The healthcare insurance industry has the most interesting past and surprisingly, the introduction of healthcare insurance dates back several years before the civil war and many of the concepts first used to establish the health insurance policies are still in use today. In 1847, Massachusetts Health Insurance of Boston issued the first individual health insurance policies that covered personal accidents (while travelling by rail or steamboat). Later, during the civil war, other companies entered the market and offered similar health plans.
An important factor that helped insurance companies take root in American society was that the medical associations embraced health insurance because it helped doctors earn higher salaries. Before health insurance became popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s, doctors earned a little more than the hourly labor [ (Hummer, 2010) ]. The American Medical Association fiercely resisted any kind of federally funded health insurance program because it believed that the doctors would lose control of the healthcare process and their fees and practices would be unfairly regulated by the State.
The advent of World War I, the advance of socialism in Russia, the big stock market crash, and the “Great Depression” of 1929 changed many people’s

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