Isaac Max Rubinow

Isaac Max Rubinow (1875–1936) was a leading theorist on social insurance and one of the most influential writers on the subject. Rubinow was an MD, and held a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University. His 1913 book, Social Insurance, was the most influential early work on social security. His work impacted a generation of social reformers, including President Theodore Roosevelt, who used Rubinow's work in drafting the Progressive Party platform in 1912. The Progressive Party was the first of its kind to call for social insurance.

Rubinow was born in Lithuania (at the time part of Russia) and immigrated to the United States when he was eighteen. He attended New York University Medical School from which he received the M.D. He then practiced medicine among the poorer Jewish neighborhoods of New York City until 1900 when he enrolled in Columbia University studying economics, sociology, and politics. In 1903, he took a position with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, abandoning his medical profession. He left the BLS in 1911 to finish his Ph.D. at Columbia which he did in 1914. His dissertation was a comparative study of workingmen's insurance in Italy, Russia, and Spain, which was expanded for his Standards of Health Insurance (1916) While at Columbia, Rubinow began advocating for a nationalized system of health insurance for the U.S. He believed that only through a government-run health program could all the health needs of the working class be met. He thought that private practice neglected the needs of the poor and that to remedy that, doctors should be salaried by the state or other public health organizations.

Rubinow joined the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) which had been active since 1906 advocating social legislation, including a national health insurance plan. In 1916, he was appointed as the executive secretary of the American Medical Association's Committee on Social Insurance which had been created that year. With AMA sanction, Rubinow began promoting the AALL national health insurance plan but by the Spring of 1917 with the entry of the United States into World War I the movement was all but dead.

Following the collapse of his efforts for a national health insurance program, Rubinow became active in the American Zionist Medical Unit.

While at Columbia, Rubinow had joined the American Socialist Party. As a Russian Jew, Marxism was part of his cultural heritage. While Rubinow may have been conscious of the Lithuanian Jewish labor movement of the 1880s and 1890s (when he was in his teens), he did not participate, but he remained sympathetic to the labor movement ever after. Later in life, he distanced himself from socialist politics, relying mostly on his professional reputation as a social scientist expert on social insurance.

Employed as an actuary, Rubinow was central to the formation of the Casualty Actuarial and Statistical Society of America in 1914, which is known today as the Casualty Actuarial Society. Rubinow was elected its first president (CAS 2008).

Rubinow's 1934 book, The Quest for Security, established him as the most recognized theorist on social insurance in the first three decades of the twentieth century.

Dr Rubinow married (1) Sophie Himwich. Their son, Raymond S. Rubinow (1905-1996), was a noted New York civic leader. Their daughter, Olga Rubinow Lurie (1907-2004), was a child psychologist and specialist in the emotional health of children. Dr Rubinow married (2) Consuelo Kamholz (1909-1993)[citation needed]. References

  1. ^ Brown, Theodore M.; Elizabeth Fee (August 2002). "Isaac Max Rubinow : Advocate for Social Insurance". Am J Public Health (Washington D.C.: American Public Health Association) 92 (8): 1224–1225. doi:10.2105/AJPH.92.8.1224. ISSN 1541-0048. http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/full/92/8/1224. Retrieved 2009-01-14. 

   * CAS (2008), "History", CAS Overview, Casualty Actuarial Society, http://www.casact.org/about/index.cfm?fa=aboutTheCAS, retrieved 2008-09-14 

Shvarts, Shifra, and Theodore M. Brown. "Kupat Holim, Dr. Isaac Max Rubinow, and the American Zionist Medical Unit's Experiment to Establish Health Care Services in Palestine, 1918-1923." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 72, no. 1 (1998): 28-46.

Rubinow was appointed medical director of the American Zionist Medical Unit in 1918. The aim of the AZMU was to provide medical relief to Jewish and Arab Palestinians who had suffered under Turkish rule during World War I.

Persondata NAME Isaac Max Rubinow ALTERNATIVE NAMES I. M. Rubinow SHORT DESCRIPTION Actuary and economist DATE OF BIRTH 1875 PLACE OF BIRTH Russia DATE OF DEATH 1936 PLACE OF DEATH United States of America