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kleinbl00  ·  3889 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why Are American Health Care Costs So High?

Fine. It's still an onslaught. The "shouting head" approach to education is a big misstep. It should be avoided at all costs.

    Also, wouldn't small organizations have it worse off because they have less leverage with regards to negotiating prices?

Link 2:

    This era also saw the birth of one of the largest health insurance programs—the “Blues.” In Dallas, the administrators of Baylor Hospital created a system to help close the affordability gap and attract patients by offering high school teachers 21 days of hospital care for $6 per year. Similar prepaid hospital plans developed throughout the nation and were endorsed by the American Hospital Association. Combined under the name Blue Cross (BC), these plans had tax-exempt status under state laws that allowed them to operate as nonprofit organizations.

    Around the same time, Blue Shield (BS) was developed by medical service bureaus composed of physician groups in the Pacific Northwest to provide medical care to lumber and mine workers for a monthly fee. Everyone was charged the same premium, regardless of age, sex, or pre-existing conditions.

    These plans were so popular that when Sen. Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.), Sen. James Murray (D-Mont.), and Rep. John Dingell Sr. (D-Mich.) proposed a national health insurance plan in 1943, the legislation failed, in part due to backlash against government expansion into an area now well-covered by the nonprofit sector.

THAT is what I speak of - a system of basic health insurance that was affordable and universal to all, essentially, that was annihilated by the Stabilization Act of 1942.