Health Care in the Early 1960S
Health Care in the Early 1960s Rosemary A. Stevens, Ph.D. My topic, health care in the early 1960s, comment from a visiting delegation from has a double set of meanings for me. I am a Britain in 1960 were complete air condi- historian, and the 1960s are now "history," tioning and artificial lighting systems, ad- ripe for new interpretations. Yet I was also justable electric beds, carpets in private an immigrant to the United States in 1961, rooms, pass-through refrigerators in the fresh from working as an administrator in kitchen, central milk kitchens, central ster- the British National Health Service. The ile supply services, automatic X-ray proces- period immediately before the Medicare sors, autoanalyzers in the laboratory, plas- legislation in 1965 shines in my memory tic bags for blood, identification bracelets with the vividness of new impressions: for patients, pneumatic tube systems for those of a young health care student trying communications and, not least, massive to make sense of the U. S. health care sys- power plants (Hurst, 1960). In the United tem, and indeed, of the United States. States, the hospital was readily compared The health care system and the United with industrial corporations. States as a society stand, in many ways, as Yet the gaps and variations in both rheto- proxy for each other, now as then: The ric and service were extraordinary. To the whole tells you much about the part, and new migrant, the vast cross-continental the part about the whole. In the early network of superhighways appeared to 1960s, health care was already a massive connect cities-indeed swept through, enterprise.
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