Nixon IS to blame.
When he made health care available to people as a job ‘benefit’ it was one step closer to a faceless benefit that, eventually, only the government could provide.
Before then people paid for their own medical bills. And churches and charities stepped in when things got really bad.
Then, the costs became hidden. When your ‘co-pay’ is all your see, it does not matter where you go. Why shop around? Its the same price everywhere.
Except it isn’t, and companies figured out they could charge as much as they could collude with the insurance companies to pay. With Government and FDA ‘approval’.
Invent a new drug that allows men to have more sex? I wonder if there would be a market for something like that...?
Why mass-produce it for pennies when you can get government to FORCE insurance companies to pay $95 a pill, as part of your ‘health care’
Get the government totally out of health care and the costs will go down. Get them totally involved and you will have The VA for all.
“Before then people paid for their own medical bills.
—
Nope-—we had employer paid healthcare in the early 60s.
.
Back to the research stacks for you - employers began paying health insurance premiums as an employment benefit back in WW2 as a response to wage freezes so they could entice the workers they needed for the war effort. Wages were frozen/controlled but benefits were not so that was the way to become the employer of choice in those days. As Mears notes, the benefit was well-entrenched by the 60s and Nixon being elected in 1968 had little to do with how it continued and expanded.
Nixon IS to blame.
Health insurance became part of people’s job benefits in WWII when FDR price fixed wages. To jack up the salaries employers were allowed to pay their employees health insurance. They have never paid for “health care”.
Nixon was nowhere to be seen when this was taking place.