History lesson time: This wasn’t done on purpose. It’s an artifact of decisions made by Congress during World War II to support war production.
So many young men were away at war that it created a labor shortage, even with some women entering the work force. This led to spiraling increases in wages that were threatening the viability of critical war manufacturers.
In an effort to protect this manufacturing sector, Congress capped wage increases. But those corporations were still competing for workers and now they were no longer able to offer them higher and higher wages. So instead, they started offering them “perks” like health insurance, pensions, and paid time off.
THEN:
“In 1943 the War Labor Board, which had one year earlier introduced wage and price controls, ruled that contributions to insurance and pension funds did not count as wages. In a war economy with labor shortages, employer contributions for employee health benefits became a means of maneuvering around wage controls.”
Emphasis mine. And guess what? When those young men returned from war and re-entered the work force, they wanted those perks too. So which company was going to be the first to deescalate the arms race and NOT offer health insurance?
And those perks being so ubiquitous meant the government never had an incentive to provide health coverage directly to anyone of working age, so we only have Medicare for retirees.
And you also can’t discount the role Unions played in the American healthcare system. Because not only can you get healthcare through your employer, if you’re in a union you can get coverage through your union. And there was a time when unions had their own doctors on payroll.
You forgot this part, before WW2:
During the Great Depression, FDR considered making national health insurance part of his signature New Deal legislation — which would have made the US a pioneer — but those provisions were nixed to prioritize the Social Security retirement and disability programs, among others.
So old people chose something that benefits themselves only over something that benefits everyone.
And the the employer requirement and massive expansion of GMOs were added under Nixon. He and his contemporaries could have pushed for national health care but of course they didn’t.
Had to look it up myself. I think it refers to Group Member Organizations, which would be the health insurance providers.
When you really think about it, health insurance companies are a bizarre sort of consumers’ union. Your insurance company negotiates prices with providers on your (and their own) behalf leveraging their buying power based on the size of the group. That was probably a good thing at one time, but now the system is so completely broken that if you try to get the same procedure done without insurance, and it’ll cost you double or triple what it would cost the insurance company.
