Why Doesn’t the United States Have National Health Insurance? The Role of the American Medical Association

This paper previously circulated as 'Interest Groups, Ideology, and Indirect Lobbying: The Rise of Private Health Insurance In the United States'. The authors would like to thank Corey Purcell from the Harvard Medical School Countway Library, Jorie Braunold and Kelsey Walsh from the American Medical Association Archives, Kim Garber from the American Hospital Association Archives, Beth Benham from the State Archives of the State of California, and Adam Berenbak from the National Archives in D.C., for their generous assistance in accessing many of the historical resources used in this work. We thank seminar participants at NBER Economics of Culture and Institutions, NBER Development of the American Economy, Cleveland Clinic, Clark University, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Medical School, University of Kentucky, University of Southern California, New York University, Columbia School of Public Health, University of British Columbia, Brown University Population Studies, London School of Economics, Harvard Kennedy School, Northwestern University, Harvard Economic History, University of California Davis, and the University of Copenhagen for helpful comments. We also thank Daron Acemoglu, Amitabh Chandra, David Cutler, Melissa Dell, Maya Durvasula, Amy Finkelstein, Price Fishback, Raymond Fisman, Paola Giuliano, Edward Glaeser, Grant Goehring, Claudia Goldin, Andrew Goodman-Bacon, Jonathan Gruber, Eric Hilt, Peter Hull, Asim Khwaja, Eliana La Ferrara, Gary Libecap, Nathan Nunn, Matt Notowidigdo, Joshua Schwartzstein, Mark Shepard, Jon Skinner, Marco Tabellini, and Marcos Vera-Hernandez. Jeongmook Lim, Michelle Lin, Vanessa Jia, Anne Fogarty, Michelle Wu, Maya Rosen, Anna Volpp, and Xingyou Ye provided excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• May 17, 2024