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The Political Economy of State Provided Health Insurance in the Progressive Era: Evidence from California

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Dora L. Costa

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Abstract

I investigate why the United States did not adopt European style health insurance in the 1910s by examining voting determinants on the 1918 referendum on state-provided health insurance in California. I find that although the persuasiveness of interest groups, especially doctors, was an important determinant of the 1918 vote, interest groups alone could not explain the resounding defeat of state-provided health insurance. Voters, I find, were unwilling to pass a costly measure with an unpredictable outcome.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 5328.

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Date of creation: Oct 1995
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5328

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

  1. Kalt, Joseph P & Zupan, Mark A, 1990. "The Apparent Ideological Behavior of Legislators: Testing for Principal-Agent Slack in Political Institutions," Journal of Law & Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 103-31, April.
  2. Peltzman, Sam, 1984. "Constituent Interest and Congressional Voting," Journal of Law & Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 181-210, April.
  3. Peltzman, Sam, 1992. "Voters as Fiscal Conservatives," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 107(2), pages 327-61, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Matsusaka, John G, 1995. "Fiscal Effects of the Voter Initiative: Evidence from the Last 30 Years," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(3), pages 587-623, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Matsusaka, John G, 1992. "Economics of Direct Legislation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 107(2), pages 541-71, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Romer, Thomas & Rosenthal, Howard, 1979. "Bureaucrats versus Voters: On the Political Economy of Resource Allocation by Direct Democracy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 563-87, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Poole, Keith T & Rosenthal, Howard, 1993. "The Enduring Nineteenth-Century Battle for Economic Regulation: The Interstate Commerce Act Revisited," Journal of Law & Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(2), pages 837-60, October.
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  1. Herbert Emery, 2008. "America’s Rejection of Compulsory Government Health Insurance in the Progressive Era and its Legacy for National Insurance Today," Working Papers 2008-23, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 01 Jan 2008. [Downloadable!]
  2. Brigitte Madrian, 2006. "The U.S. Health Care System and Labor Markets," NBER Working Papers 11980, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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