Prologue: America's occasional flirtations with national health insurance have been a footnote to our history for most of the twentieth century. Once again, as health costs soar for people with insurance and access to care erodes for the disenfranchised, the United States is discussing health financing reforms. One of our nations most astute observers of this long saga is Victor Fuchs, the Henry J. Kaiser, ]r. Professor at Stanford University. In this essay, Fuchs revisits the subject in the context of a paper he wrote fifteen years ago entitled, “From Bismarck to Woodcock: The ‘Irrational’ Pursuit of National Health Insurance.” When Fuchs began to practice health economics in the mid-1960s, it was little more than a gleam in the eye of the broader discipline of economics. In the ensuing years, it has taken U.S. health policy making by storm, leaving the allied disciplines of the social sciences, for better or worse, in the dust. One of the many interesting messages Fuchs has sought to deliver over the ye...