This video features Thom Hartmann, radio host and author of The Hidden History of American Healthcare, presenting his own historical account of why the U.S. never adopted national health insurance. Hartmann traces the divergence back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, arguing that scientific racism — citing figures like Frederick Ludwig Hoffman — shaped early opposition to extending healthcare access, and that this pattern persisted through healthcare reform efforts into the 1960s. He argues this evolved into a profit-driven healthcare industry following 1980s deregulation, and connects the case for Medicare for All to a broader argument about protecting shared public resources (“the commons”), pointing to Canada’s provincial rollout of universal healthcare as a model.
Note: this is Hartmann’s own historical and political argument, not a neutral account — it reflects one author’s specific thesis about causation in American healthcare history, an area where historians and economists hold a range of views, and isn’t independently verified by this site.