" Body Politics: A History of Health Care " [audio 54 min 51 sec]

FightTBIn 1912 Teddy Roosevelt was the first presidential candidate to run on a platform of national health care reform. He advocated a system based on the German model…and was soundly defeated. This episode of BackStory looks at the origins of our current health care debate. How did we end up with a system so different from other industrialized countries? Brian talks to Jacob Hacker, author of the "public option" plan, about why lobbyists hold so much sway when it comes to health care. Then we travel back to 17th century Virginia to learn about the continent's first public hospital. And we also hear the story of how the practice of inoculation came to the New World.