It was during the Great Depression and WWII that employer-provided health insurance took off. The fed instituted a wage freeze to combat inflation in the 40s, and as a result, employers had to start offering other incentives like health insurance to attract/retain their workforce.
FDR wanted to pass universal healthcare (along with a lot of other progressive policies) under his Second Bill of Rights, but it never came to be. Had his ideas been enshrined in law, we’d have universal healthcare, a minimum livable wage, adequate housing, the right to work, and several others.
Thanks, I vaguely remembered it being related to WWII and being intended as a temporary stopgap measure due to having few other options, it being a rough time…but I didn’t remember the details well enough to cite like that. We ought to make this a bit of common knowledge, truly!
Entire organizations (insurance companies) who do not facilitate health and well-being in any significant way at all - and often impede it, with real commitment! - profit massively from this dysfunction, while both patients AND caregivers suffer mightily, to feed the parasite.
That combined with the fact that the “health insurance via employment” system was set up as essentially a crisis response which should never have been maintained…just really needs to be hammered home.
It was during the Great Depression and WWII that employer-provided health insurance took off. The fed instituted a wage freeze to combat inflation in the 40s, and as a result, employers had to start offering other incentives like health insurance to attract/retain their workforce.
FDR wanted to pass universal healthcare (along with a lot of other progressive policies) under his Second Bill of Rights, but it never came to be. Had his ideas been enshrined in law, we’d have universal healthcare, a minimum livable wage, adequate housing, the right to work, and several others.
Thanks, I vaguely remembered it being related to WWII and being intended as a temporary stopgap measure due to having few other options, it being a rough time…but I didn’t remember the details well enough to cite like that. We ought to make this a bit of common knowledge, truly!
Entire organizations (insurance companies) who do not facilitate health and well-being in any significant way at all - and often impede it, with real commitment! - profit massively from this dysfunction, while both patients AND caregivers suffer mightily, to feed the parasite.
That combined with the fact that the “health insurance via employment” system was set up as essentially a crisis response which should never have been maintained…just really needs to be hammered home.