Socialized Medicine - History

History

The first system of socialized medicine based on compulsory insurance with state subsidy was created by Bismarck's social legislation, a pragmatic answer to vanishing traditional networks of mutual support in a world of modern individualism, as well as an attempt to take the wind out of social democrats sails in the 1880s. Socialized health care was implemented by the Soviet Union in the 1920s. New Zealand was the first country with a mixed economy to initiate the direct provision of health care by the state when, in 1939, it provided mental health services free of cost to the recipient following the passing of the Social Security Act of 1938. After World War II in the 1940s the United Kingdom established its National Health Service, which was built from the outset as a comprehensive service, and most of Europe followed suit in the immediate post-war years with systems varying from universal insurance coverage funded by the state, to universal healthcare provision by the state. A socialized model was used in China in from the 1950s to the 1970s during the first two decades of communist rule. Cuba adopted socialized medicine in the 1960s under the leadership of Fidel Castro. Also in the 1960s, the United States initiated its Medicaid program to help poor mothers and their children.