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What Do You Know About the History of the U.S. Health System?
Milestones Like Medicare, Private Equity and Now AI Shape a $4.9 Trillion System. Can You Name Them?
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Test your knowledge of U.S. health care and how it came to be!
These questions are drawn from a comprehensive historical review by LDI Senior Fellows Arnold J. Rosoff, Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Robert I. Field of Drexel University, with Anthony W. Orlando of California State Polytechnic University.
The article points out that private businesses have long been a feature in the U.S. system and are a major reason it is so expensive.
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Results
#1. How does the phrase “If you build it, they will come” apply to the ever more costly U.S. health system?
#2. What role did the Hill-Burton Act of 1946 play in shaping the U.S. hospital system?
#3. Why was Medicare designed to build upon private insurance models like Blue Cross and Blue Shield?
#4. What was the significance of Section 1801 of the Medicare law?
#5. How did UCLA Professor Milton Roemer’s observation about hospital beds become known as “Roemer’s Law”?
#6. What are Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRGs), and how did they change Medicare’s reimbursement?
#7. Why did HMOs begin to grow their market share in the 1970s?
#8. How did the Affordable Care Act expand the role of private insurers?
#9. How has private equity investment changed health care delivery?
#10. Which Penn LDI Professor helped draft the first Medicare bill in 1965?
The article, “The Government Built It, and the Private Sector Came: For-Profit Health Care, Government Support, and the Road from Public Service to Private Equity,” was published in the American Journal of Law and Medicine on September 16, 2025. Authors include Arnold J. Rosoff, Robert I. Field, and Anthony W. Orlando.
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