Listing of Congressional Hearings on National Healthcare

Extensive Congressional hearings were held on national healthcare reform during the two periods when legislation was most likely to pass - during President Harry Truman's push for national healthcare during the 1940s, and during the 1970s when Senator Ted Kennedy was pushing single-payer healthcare and President Nixon proposed a universal plan based on employer mandates and subsidized care for the unemployed and underemployed. The Congressional Records of these hearings - included in the linked pages below - provide a remarkable window into the politics of the era, and the coalitions that formed in support of and opposition to single-payer healthcare.

A more complete record of the history of national single-payer legislation can be found in our timeline of national single-payer legislation from the 1940s through the present, a graph of growing sponsorship levels of single-payer legislation since the 1970s, and a sortable listing of single-payer bills.