Founding Fathers Faced Health Care Revolt, Too
source: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/10/04/a_pox_on_you/
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In an article for the Boston Globe, "A Pox on You," Andrew Wehrman reveals that the current national debate on health care is nothing new. The founding fathers debated their own health care regulations — and faced a revolt — some 200 years ago.
On a blustery January night in 1774, scarcely a month after the famous Tea Party in Boston, an even more shocking protest unfolded on Massachusetts’ North Shore. In the dead of night, a crew of 20 men blackened their faces and armed themselves with torches and buckets of tar. The object of their anger was not a chest of tea, a tax collector, or British soldiers. What these men, mostly sailors from Marblehead, burned down was the town’s brand new hospital.
Health care in Colonial America looked nothing like what we’d consider medicine today, but the debates it triggered were similar. The danger of smallpox and the high cost of its prevention led to divisive questions about who should pay, whether everyone deserved equal access, and if responsibility lay at the feet of the individual, the state, or the nation. Epidemics forced the early republic to wrestle with the question of the federal government’s proper role in regulating the nation’s health.
Colonial leaders and ordinary people alike possessed a similar sense that a proper solution to these issues would determine the brightness and shape of America’s future. At times conflicts over public health threatened the social and political fabric of communities. Did these rowdy Colonials, with the aid of the Founding Fathers, solve these dilemmas? Hardly. But their observations, questions, and compromises offer a useful lesson for what we can expect as we find ourselves again with health care in the forefront of the national conversation.
On a blustery January night in 1774, scarcely a month after the famous Tea Party in Boston, an even more shocking protest unfolded on Massachusetts’ North Shore. In the dead of night, a crew of 20 men blackened their faces and armed themselves with torches and buckets of tar. The object of their anger was not a chest of tea, a tax collector, or British soldiers. What these men, mostly sailors from Marblehead, burned down was the town’s brand new hospital.
Health care in Colonial America looked nothing like what we’d consider medicine today, but the debates it triggered were similar. The danger of smallpox and the high cost of its prevention led to divisive questions about who should pay, whether everyone deserved equal access, and if responsibility lay at the feet of the individual, the state, or the nation. Epidemics forced the early republic to wrestle with the question of the federal government’s proper role in regulating the nation’s health.
Colonial leaders and ordinary people alike possessed a similar sense that a proper solution to these issues would determine the brightness and shape of America’s future. At times conflicts over public health threatened the social and political fabric of communities. Did these rowdy Colonials, with the aid of the Founding Fathers, solve these dilemmas? Hardly. But their observations, questions, and compromises offer a useful lesson for what we can expect as we find ourselves again with health care in the forefront of the national conversation.
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