New Deal Medicine: The Rural Health Programs of the Farm Security Administration

The problems of rural America were one of the driving forces behind the New Deal. The pragmatic approach to policy making which characterised the implementation of the New Deal is often over looked in current discussion, largely because people think of what worked as the only possible solutions.Prof Grey's book is an invaluable addition to the bookshelf of anyone studying public policy or the sociology of rural areas.

Dr. Michael Grey's book entitled "New Deal Medicine" is a history of the progressive health programs of the Farm Security Administration. The book documents, in detail, some of the earliest experiments in the US of government-directed medical care. His work had its beginnings nearly 20 years ago when he tackled the FSA as the subject of his Harvard undergraduate thesis. He is now Professor of General Internal Medicine at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. All that time, he has been working on this exceedingly well-documented history of the various FSA health initiatives and their respective demisesThese experiments took place in the midst of the series of well-known "Reports of the Commissions" and the reactions to them of the AMA and others, that reveal, among other things, the "traditional" tensions between organized medicine and the public interest during the late 20s through World War II [and down to this day].The salience of the whole FSA health-care experience to today's environment is particularly fascinating. It may be too much to expect that any of those lessons would be applied to the current scene, or changes would already have taken place [several times over]. If the new players [insurers] on the block continue to dominate health care, they could force a new patient-physician coalition. If only the trust in government and one another that has been lost [if it were ever more than a fragile reed] could somehow be regained and cultivated, there might be hope.