Indiana Consortium For Mental Health
Services Research
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

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Abstract

Reprint # 52: The American Health Care System: Entering the Twenty-first Century with High Risk, Major Challenges, and Great Opportunities

 At the end of the nineteenth century, the medical profession stood In the midst of great change in America. The coming of the industrial revolution coupled with new scientific theories for the practice and training of physicians produced the modern system of medicine. Given that great "social transformation" of American medicine (Starr 1982), there was little doubt in the minds of the leaders of the new scientific profession that the American health care system would be substantially different from the one at the beginning of the nineteenth century or even at mid-century. As it evolved during the twentieth century, the modern health care system in the United States took a very different form from many of its European counterparts, building a mixed private and public system of care with powerful physician direction.