organized campaign by the AMA helped defeat Truman’s plan for national health
insurance (Poen 1979). In fact, at the same time the AMA and other opponents of
national health insurance organized the defeat of legislative proposals in the United States,
occupation officials lost their enthusiasm for a comprehensive reform of the Japanese
health care system as well.
OCCUPATION POLICIES TOWARD HEALTH, 1949-1952
During the early occupation period from 1945 to 1947, occupation officials and
Japanese bureaucrats alike embraced the goal of comprehensive health insurance reform.
By late 1948, after a year of congressional investigation, accusations of socialized
medicine, and a visit from the American Medical Association to observe occupation
health policies, American enthusiasm for a single, compulsory system of national health
insurance in Japan was on the wane. Although the Ministry of Health and Welfare and
other social policy experts in Japan continued to espouse plans for a comprehensive
reform, “a Japanese version of the Beveridge Plan” (Saguchi 1960: 62-3), occupation
officials now adopted a more piecemeal approach to the problems of health insurance.
In its report to the Japanese government in July 1948, for example, the Social
Security Mission noted that, although “there is strong sentiment in Japan for instituting a
universal medical care program forthwith...there are nevertheless serious reasons why it
is considered unwise to inaugurate such a plan as part of the reformation of the social
insurances at this time” (SCAP PHW 1948a: 10). Chief among these reasons were
doubts about the administrative capacity of the social insurance system, especially at the
local level, and the wisdom of embarking upon major reforms during a period of
economic uncertainty. During the upheaval of the postwar years, many local health
23
Convention