Medicare and Medicaid, indeed, fell well short of national health insurance. They helped only the elderly and certain categories of the poor. Most Americans, including the working poor, had to contribute to employer-subsidized group insurance plans, to pay for private insurance on their own, or to do without. Those who lost their jobs often forfeited whatever coverage they may have had. And millions of people did do without. No other industrialized Western nation had higher percentages of its people—still about 15 percent in the early 1990s—without medical insurance.
