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Health care insurance started going downhill in this country during the Great Depression and World War II, despite the numerous technical advances that were made during that period.
Then-President FDR clamped huge restrictions onto many parts of the economy during the Depression (resulting in that depression stretching out further than any ever had in world history), and they became even worse during WWII. One of them was wage and price controls, which became onerous as many able-bodied men joined the armed services to fight in the war.
Attracting talented people to fulfill the jobs they left was tough enough with so many good men joining up, and the govt's wage controls made the situation worse when employers found they couldn't offer higher wages to get people to hire on. Whether this was justifiable, not to say effective, by the war emergency is debatable.
Employers screamed bloody murder as their businesses approached collapse due to unfilled jobs, and while government refused to lift its wage and price controls, they announced the employers could offer benefits in lieu of pay to attract workers. One benefit was a tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance.
This helped somewhat, but with an employer only able to offer a few insurance plans, it locked employees into fairly uncompetetive market unless he changed jobs. And FDR's relatively new policy of "tax withholding" was extended to the employee part of the payments for insurance, further insulating the employee fro the gut-check of having to write weekly or monthly checks to the insurance company.
Employers offered "Cadillac" plans in their efforts to attract workers, and the employees seldom saw the actual cost of those expensive plans, which often paid for routine medications and office visits formerly not covered by real insurance plans. That, plus the lack of competition most insurance companies found themselves facing, removed a lot of their impetus to pare costs. And employees became used to health care which "seemed free", and started thinking of it as something akin to a "right", since it (sort of) appeared to cost nothing.
When the war ended, government did NOT remove the tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance even though the circumstances that made it desirable were now gone. And so health insurance has existed in a strange nether world ever since for most people, with employees of a company locked into the few (or one) insurance plan offered by that company with little likelihood they will ever leave it. At the same time it appeared to cost little or nothing, with even routine services (far beyond the major-event coverage real insurance is for) included and seeming "complimentary".
Fast forward to the 21st century. Now we have self-serving politicians screaming from the rooftops that health care is somehow a "right", though it comes nowhere close to resembling a right to liberty, right to speech, right to self-defense etc. - all of which are based on the fundamental right to be left alone and to associate only voluntarily with others. And most people, used to generations of "free" health care that was caused by that very government long ago, are actually believing it, despite the clear unworkability of the idea, the unnecessary expense and clumsiness of one-size-fits-all (or even three-sizes-fit-all) policies administered from thousand of miles away in Washington.
The cockeyed notion that we somehow have a "right" to have a broken arm set or an infection cleaned and treated by others, came (as so many cockeyed ideas do) from government intrusion into private matters in the first place.
We should be thankful that the government didn't offer tax breaks for food purchased by one's employer. Or by now, the same deluded people would be screaming that they had a "right" to food (some actually believe this one too, after generations of food stamps). Ditto for rent, phone service, etc., all of which have been tainted at one time or another by government programs to make them nearly "free".
Weaning Americans off these destructive addictions to "free" necessities and "rights" that aren't rights and never were, will be painful, as breaking an addiction always is. But it is no less necessary, if we are to survive as sovereign citizens in a free society.
Last edited by Little-Acorn; 11-08-2013 at 09:10 AM..
Healthcare should be a right. People can get by without a house if they are savvy enough, same with a car. But, you will inevitably get sick. Is this your fault for having trillions of bacteria crawling over your skin, even right now? No, it's not. This healthcare is not a right thing should have gone to the grave a long time ago. Luckily, the march is on for having true universal healthcare like the rest of the civilized world. It is the right thing to do, everything else is just arguing semantics and political ideology. Your entire post is nothing but a rant on political ideology
Healthcare should be a right. People can get by without a house if they are savvy enough, same with a car. But, you will inevitably get sick. Is this your fault for having trillions of bacteria crawling over your skin, even right now? No, it's not.
Is it the other person's fault whom you are forcing to pay for your medical treatment? No, it's not.
Nice try.
Quote:
Your entire post is nothing but a rant on political ideology
TRANSLATION: I can't refute anything in the OP, but I hate them anyway. So I'll call them names and try to assign some vague, irrelevant description, in hopes that someone will believe me instead of what's written there.
Because we are a more highly evolved people and we understand that human life has intrinsic value.......or at least most of us understand that.
...the right to LIFE, liberty, and pursuit of happiness".....one of those things is LIFE, which is hard to sustain without adequate health care.
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is a well-known phrase in the United States Declaration of Independence.[1] The phrase gives examples of the various "unalienable rights" which the Declaration says all human beings have been given by their Creator and for the protection of which they institute governments.
Is it the other person's fault whom you are forcing to pay for your medical treatment? No, it's not.
Nice try.
Again with the ideology. You know how sickness spreads, right? Do you know what vectors are, without looking it up? Or, how's this for a kicker? A lot of the low IQ people walking around the streets of America don't have the common decency of sneezing or coughing into their elbows, but instead either through the air or on their hand, transmitting their disease to people around them. So you think forcing THEM to pay for my resultant illness is bad?
Because we are a more highly evolved people and we understand that human life has intrinsic value.......or at least most of us understand that.
...the right to LIFE, liberty, and pursuit of happiness".....one of those things is LIFE, which is hard to sustain without adequate health care.
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is a well-known phrase in the United States Declaration of Independence.[1] The phrase gives examples of the various "unalienable rights" which the Declaration says all human beings have been given by their Creator and for the protection of which they institute governments.
Is it the other person's fault whom you are forcing to pay for your medical treatment? No, it's not.
Nice try.
Snark much?
We, as a people, certainly should help other people stay healthy for many reasons. But you could look at that "right to LIFE, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" thing. Additionally, keeping people in your community/society healthy has a very selfish aspect to it because it helps reduce epidemics, especially now with those antibiotic resistant superbugs out there. Not helping your fellow citizens stay healthy or get adequate treatment when they are injured or sick would obviously not be a priority for those who see money as their god and top priority.
We, as a people, certainly should help other people stay healthy for many reasons.
Go right ahead, help them.
I do it, too.
But quit trying to make it a government-forced program.
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