From Thom Hartmann’s perspective, the battle over whether America should provide universal healthcare has been warped first by racism, then by greed. From the 1880’s to the 1980’s the idea of universal American healthcare was often opposed because it would aid African-Americans, too. Then from the Reagan Revolution to today, greed explains the delay in adopting universal healthcare because the current system favors industry insiders. Meanwhile, the average American pays more for less than is true elsewhere in the so-called Developed World. Get ready for plenty of surprises in this episode, like how the debate about healthcare got launched by three Germans: Karl Marx, Otto von Bismarck, and a person named Frederick Ludwig Hoffman. Never heard of the third guy? Well, at a time when Prudential was the biggest insurer in America, Hoffman became the company’s leading advocate for denying healthcare on racist grounds, thereby blunting the momentum to adopt universal healthcare that the German leader Bismarck had decided was a way to counter the appeal of Marxism.

Released today: episode #84 of my podcast series “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight,” featuring Thom Hartmann discussing The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich. Click on https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/special-series/dan-hills-eq-spotlight to get to the new episode.

Thom Hartmann is a four-time winner of the Project Censored Award, a New York Times bestselling authority of 32 books, and America’s #1 progressive talk radio show host.

Dan Hill, PhD, is the president of Sensory Logic, Inc. His latest book, available on Amazon is Blah, Blah, Blah: A Snarky Guide to Office Lingo.