health insurance reform well before officials in Washington announced their plan for
economic stabilization and Joseph Dodge arrived in Japan to clamp down on public
sector spending.
A second alternative explanation is that unlike other social policies the creation of
a universal health insurance program in Japan confronted long-standing hostilities to
public provision of health care in the United States. However, like the economic
argument, the notion that health insurance reform uniquely transgressed deeply held
American values does not stand up to cross-sectional scrutiny either. For example, a
massive reform of Japan’s land tenure system dramatically redistributed private property
and had a profound impact on the Japanese countryside, ultimately transforming a nation
of landless peasants into middle-class farmers (Dore 1984 [1959]). Although a keystone
of occupation efforts, one might expect proposals for land reform to elicit concerns back
in the United States about the primacy of private property. During the 1930s, for
example, similar New Deal policies designed to help tenant farmers buy their own land
drew fierce opposition in Congress and those who supported land reforms during the
New Deal were often branded as communists in much the same way as later advocates
were for national health insurance (Gilbert and Howe 1991: 204-20). Yet unlike
occupation health care proposals that drew the ire of the AMA, occupation land reform
policies attracted little attention in the United States.
Finally, in the area of public health, Sams and PHW took a keen interest in
abortion and birth control policy despite the contentious nature of these issues. In 1948,
the Japanese Diet passed the Eugenics Protection Law, which legalized abortion in the
case of rape, if birth posed an immediate threat to the health of the mother, or, much more
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Convention