Origins of American health insurance : a history of industrial sickness funds / Jessica Benjamin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benjamin, Jessica, Author.

Series:

Yale series in economic and financial history.

Yale series in economic and financial history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Health insurance--United States--History.

Health insurance.

Sick leave--United States--History.

Sick leave.

Absenteeism (Labor)--United States.

Absenteeism (Labor).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (332 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2007]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

How did the United States come to have its distinctive workplace-based health insurance system? Why did Progressive initiatives to establish a government system fail? This book explores the history of health insurance in the United States from its roots in the nineteenth-century sickness funds offered by industrial employers, fraternal organizations, and labor unions to the rise of such group plans as Blue Cross and Blue Shield in the mid-twentieth century. Historians generally view the failure to establish universal health insurance during the first half of the twentieth century as an indicator of the political clout of insurers, employers, unions, and physicians who thwarted Progressive efforts. But the explanation is actually simpler, John Murray contends in this book. Careful analysis of the workings of industrial sickness funds suggests that workers rejected plans for compulsory state insurance because they were largely content with existing private plans. Murray revises our understanding of the evolution of health care insurance in the United States and discusses the implications of that history for the ongoing debates of today.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

1. Industrial Sickness Funds

2. Political Economy of Progressive-Era Sickness Insurance

3. Progressive Ideals: Private and Public Insurance in Europe

4. The Rise of Sickness Funds

5. How Establishment Funds Worked

6. How Labor Union Funds Worked

7. Workers' Decisions to Save or Buy Insurance

8. Workers' Decisions to Work or Stay Home Sick

9. Insured Workers' Health in the Great Depression

10. Actuarial Science and the Decline of Sickness Funds

11. Succession in the Forest of Health Care Reform

Appendix A: Data Sources

Appendix B: Additional Regressions for Chapter 7

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780300150162

0300150164

OCLC:

655234498