Government Paid for Poor Citizens' Health Care Some 300 Years Before Obamacare

There has always been government-subsidized health care in the United States. Until just after the Civil War, when state governments took more power, most Americans assumed that their local government would tax and spend to take care of the neediest. They frequently griped about the cost of these expenditures, as complaining about taxes is a long American tradition. But for about three centuries from the beginning of British North America, almost no one thought government-provided health care for the poor should go away.

That has changed. Congressional Republicans have campaigned for years on the plank that government’s involvement in health care partially go away, including its funding of programs for low-income Americans. The Obamacare replacement bill proposed by House Speaker Paul Ryan last month aimed to roll back Medicaid spending at the federal level, which would encourage states to do the same. That legislation failed, but Republicans in Washington continue to look for ways to curb spending on coverage. Yet these efforts