The History of Health Insurance

I started wondering today about the history of health insurance. One reason is that I have a cousin who when she was a little girl, in the 1940's, her brother became very ill and was in the hospital for a while and then passed away. Because her parent's didn't have medical insurance, they both had to get jobs and worked and worked and worked til they could pay off the medical bills.

So many people today go without medical insurance because of cost. It made me wonder about this system. An article, The History of Health Insurance in the United States is at http://tinyurl.com/bym2ug . I think what surprised me the most was that the first health insurance plans began during the Civil War. But it appears that health insurance having health insurance wasn't as common until 100 years later.

Another article can be found at, http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/thomasson.insurance.health.us. Lecture slides on the topics can be found at http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec20171/index.htm.

That just shows that there could be another document your ancestor singed, their application for health insurance.