The push for increased government involvement in the administration of health care in the United States dates back to 1912, when presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt, campaigning on the Progressive Party ticket, called for the establishment of a national health insurance system modeled on what already had been established in Germany.

The proposal languished until the Great Depression, when a 1932 a governmental panel known as the Wilbur Commission reported that millions of Americans were unable to afford adequate medical coverage and recommended the expansion of group medical practices and group prepayment systems wherein the financial risks associated with potential illness or disability could be shared by many people who were covered by the same insurance company.

In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt's working groups on Social Security and unemployment insurance devoted some time to discussing the feasibility of a national health insurance program that would cover every American. But because of the financial crisis that continued to grip the nation and because the American Medical Association (AMA) was strongly opposed to proposals for government-run health care, efforts to promote legislation toward that end failed to generate any traction.

In November 1945, President Harry Truman called on Congress to initiate a ten-year plan to transform the existing American health care system into one where coverage would be compulsory for all people. The American Medical Association warned that such "socialized medicine" would be detrimental to Americans' health care, and the plan ultimately stalled in Congress.

With the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the Truman administration and Congress were forced to turn their attention away from the health care debate. Nonetheless, the issue of government-provided medicine was now an established part of the political dialogue in America. And the simple fee-for-service relationship whereby patients had paid doctors out of pocket was being replaced by insurance coverage. By 1951, some 77 million U.S. residents had purchased some type of voluntary accident or sickness insurance -- an increase of 11 million over the previous year's total, and nearly 40 million more than World War II-era levels.

In a televised speech to nearly 20,000 people at New York's Madison Square Garden in May 1962, President John F. Kennedy advocated legislation to provide health benefits to Social Security recipients. Said Kennedy: "This bill serves the public interest. It involves the government because it involves the public welfare. The Constitution of the United States did not make the President or the Congress powerless. It gave them definite responsibilities to advance the general welfare, and that is what we're attempting to do." The plan, however, stalled in Congress once more.

On July 31, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating the Medicare and Medicaid programs to provide comprehensive health care coverage for people aged 65 and older, as well as for the poor, blind, and disabled. By 1968, these new government programs had caused healthcare-related spending nationwide to skyrocket and to become a major political concern. America's $50 billion in medical expenditures for that year was 25 percent higher than the corresponding figure for 1965; 500 percent higher than the figure for 1948; and 1,250 percent higher than the 1929 total.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon backed a proposal requiring employers to provide a minimum level of health insurance for their workers while also maintaining competition among private insurance companies. By contrast, Senator Ted Kennedy championed the so-called Health Security Act, a universal single-payer health reform plan directed and financed entirely by the federal government. This marked the start of a career-long effort by Kennedy to overhaul the country's health care system.

When Jimmy Carter was elected U.S. President in