History: Why is healthcare tied to the workplace?

(TIMELINE 2005: Gov. Romney is working on a universal health care plan for Massachusetts. Conservative and Liberal reforms are explored.)

Excerpt: While employers first started experimenting with health coverage during the war [WWII/FDR era], the next decade saw a huge expansion of corporate health benefits. Between 1946 and 1957, the number of US workers receiving health coverage through an employer jumped by a factor of 12. By 1957, firms were covering 12 million workers plus 20 million dependents. The employer-based system was well suited to the America of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a time when healthcare was relatively inexpensive-amounting to less than 5 percent of Gross Domestic Product, as opposed to nearly 15 percent today [2005]-and when many Americans spent their entire working lives toiling for one company.

Read more at the Boston Globe Read More......

Letter: Obama’s repeating FDR’s failed New Deal policies (April 30)

CORVALLIS GAZETTE-TIMES/OPINION, 4/30/2009, Letter by Jeff Limón - History shows that government-run economies don’t work. I do not believe that history repeats itself, but I do believe that history rhymes with itself. ∴ See if these words sound familiar: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work”? Or how about: “I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises.” Or: “I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started -. And an enormous debt to boot!”

Well, if you answered Henry Morgenthau Jr., close friend and loyal secretary of the Treasury to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a key architect of FDR’s New Deal, then you would be right!

My, how quickly we forget our history. I’m wondering why we think that the laws of economics that prevailed in the 1930s will somehow not apply in the coming months and years?

As we slide toward socialism, remember Morgenthau’s words. Remember also the example of East and West Germany. Here were two countries with similar cultures, similar work ethics, similar levels of education, similar history and so forth. The only thing that was different was their system of government. In the West, lower taxes, free markets, entrepreneurial spirit, and prosperity. In the East, socialism and painful poverty.

Jeff Limon, Corvallis Read More......

Deja vu (depends on you)

From Roger Kimball's “Planned Economy or Planned Destruction?”
(Click image for enlarged view)

ROGER'S RULES, 3/26/2009 by Roger Kimball - "As we contemplate the obscene spectacle of economic profligacy emanating from Washington, it is worth reminding ourselves that we’ve been down this road before. That act of what Plato called anamnesis has two salutary effects: 1) it admonishes us about the dangers we face from the collectivists at the helm in Washington and 2) it gives us the confidence to resist, because we know from experience that our resistance, though arduous, can be successful.

Whence the reminders? Well, one can turn to the disabused literature on the Great Depression — to Amity Shlaes’s brilliant book The Forgotten Man, for example. One may also avail oneself of some past reflections on the subject–for example, this educational cartoon from the April 21, 1934 issue of The Chicago Tribune:" Read More......