ABSTRACT
The Republican administration's response was to blunt the movement for national health insurance by funding seed money for a national program of health maintenance organizations, prepaid group practices that health care providers and the commercial health insurance industry could live with. Despite the phenomenal growth of Blue Cross plans throughout the nation in the first couple of decades of their existence, during the early 1950s private commercial hospital insurance grew at an even faster rate, eventually overtaking Blue Cross in market share. The dominant position of commercial health insurance is quite a phenomenon in the history of the United States. The Committee for a National Health Service was formed in 1975 to develop the legislation and the political backing for it. The Medical Committee for Human Rights was composed of health activists in the 1960s and early 1970s. During the period 1912-1920 the American Association for Labor Legislation conducted the first major campaign for a national health insurance plan.
