[Editor’s Note: This Q & A with Dr. Michel Accad, M.D. on the economic history of modern medicine covers the Great Depression to modern times. Part 1 covers the “pre-Flexner era” to the Great Depression.]

Q: What alternative models of health care payment were sought during the Great Depression?

Aprioristic reasoning is purely conceptual and deductive. It cannot produce anything else but tautologies and analytic judgments. All its implications are logically derived from the premises and were already contained in them. Hence, according to a popular objection, it cannot add anything to our knowledge.

Meghann Foye, a childless woman, demands that people without children get maternity leave too. The purpose, Foye explains, is to allow all workers the same sort of “self-reflection” that parents of small children apparently enjoy in abundance. Writes Foye: 

In our time, the greatest source of money chaos is now the global 2%-inflation standard. Deflation-phobic central bankers, led by the FOMC at the Fed, are defying the natural rhythm of prices in a capitalist economy. Under sound money, there would be periods of both falling and rising prices.

Donald Trump is certainly not the only powerful protectionist out there. Chinese steel production has been coming under increasing attack by American interest groups and the US government itself.