Japanese doctors also had misgivings about health policy reform, especially under a
nationalized health system. However, during this early period of the occupation, before
the reestablishment of the Japan Medical Association as a professional organization
under the aegis of the occupation in 1948, doctors did not play a central role in policy
debates either (Nomura 1976: 56).
This expert consensus around universal health care and the relative weakness of
reform opponents in Japan stands in stark contrast to the constellation of interests
involved in debates over national health insurance going on at the time in the United
States. In May 1947, Senator James Murray (Democrat-Montana) introduced Senate bill
1320, the National Health Insurance and Public Health Act, co-sponsored with Senator
Robert Wagner (Democrat-New York). Like the previous two Wagner-Murray bills in
the Senate, the centerpiece of S. 1320 was a system of national health insurance financed
by payroll taxes to cover the health care needs of all Americans. By design, the bill’s
sponsors scheduled its introduction on the same day President Harry S. Truman issued his
second special message to Congress calling for a program of national health insurance
(Poen 1979: 100). Echoing his 1945 health care message Truman wrote, “Every
American should have the right to adequate medical care and to adequate protection from
the economic threat of sickness,” adding that, “National health insurance is the most
effective single way to meet the Nation’s health needs” (Truman 1947: 250-2).
Two weeks later, Senator Robert A. Taft (Republican-Ohio), presidential aspirant
and Chair of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee began hearings on S. 1320.
Immediately, the debate over national health insurance became an opening salvo in the
upcoming 1948 presidential campaign. As Monte Poen (1979: 102) writes, “with the
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