What do Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Bill Clinton all have in common? They all supported the idea of national health coverage. In stepping back from the issues at hand with the Affordable Care Act, it's important to note how the idea of national health coverage has crossed party lines, from Republican to Democratic hands, and has been more than a hundred years in the making. Though Barack Obama is the first American president to succeed in passing a universal health-care plan, in his new book Mother of Invention, Drexel University law professor Robert I. Field, reminds us that the idea of a national health plan isn't anything new.
