History of US Healthcare
How did we get here?
I’m excited to release the next page from my US Healthcare Wiki, which details the history of US Healthcare. I will release other pages in future weeks that will, in their entirety, give you a sense of the key players and incentives that have created our system. Thanks to Dr. Mario Molina, Mathis Varin, and Arjun Prakash for the help here.
If you’re interested in contributing, please reach out. I’ve linked the full page below and added an excerpt in the next section.
In the early days…
Patients were mostly cared for by the domestic household or lay healers. The caretaker in the home environment was usually the matriarch of the family and maintained a close emotional bond with the patient. The treatment provided by matriarchs in domestic settings was often rooted in traditional care practices, including herbal remedies, home-cooked foods, and emotional support. Lay healers too rooted their practices in experience, tradition, and community knowledge. In the 1800s, most lay healers were apart of the Thomsonian (aka Popular Health) movement, which favored natural remedies over professionalized medicine. They believed in the body’s ability to heal itself and emphasized treatments using botanicals.
Thomsonianism arose as a reaction against the harsh and invasive medical practices of the time, such as bloodletting and the use of toxic substances like mercury. It gained significant traction among the working-class, who appreciated its simplicity, affordability, and independence from elite, professional physicians.
Despite its popularity, Thomsonianism faced criticism and legal challenges from the emerging medical establishment, particularly as physicians sought to regulate medical practice through licensing laws. By the mid-19th century, Thomsonianism began to decline, giving way to other alternative medical movements, such as homeopathy and eclectic medicine, which built on its ideas and sought a middle ground between traditional and conventional medicine. This pattern of alternative medicine rising in popularity, facing professional opposition, and either evolving or being absorbed into mainstream medicine has continued throughout U.S. history. Movements such as naturopathy, chiropractic care, and functional medicine have followed similar trajectories, often emerging in response to perceived gaps in conventional care and adapting to regulatory pressures while maintaining public appeal.
“There can be no good reason for keeping us ignorant of the medicines we are compelled to swallow.” - Thomsonian writer