No what happened happened and I was there -- I didn't read it in a history book. Medicare and Union contracted medical insurance happened around the sametime exceptions to rules don't mean much in the general context
Quote:
For a variety of reasons, unions began a push for employer provision and funding of health and other benefits that employers strongly resisted. In an action that was a blow to union control of health plans and a stimulus to employer-controlled programs, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 banned union control of welfare funds based on employer contributions. On the positive side, an attempt to explicitly exclude employee benefits from the requirement for collective bargaining failed, and the law retained the vague language of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act that required management to bargain on "wages and conditions of employment." The law also established regulations for joint employer-union control of plans involving multiple employers.
Health and welfare benefits were major factors in a wave of postwar strikes and other conflicts with employers over what bargaining on "conditions of employment" involved.16 Key National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rulings in 1948 clarified the matter. The NLRB held, in a case involving Inland Steel Company and the United Steel Workers, that federal law required employers to bargain over pensions. Shortly after that, the board ruled likewise for health insurance benefits. The Supreme Court upheld the NLRB in 1949. Still, over half the strikes in 1949 and the first part of 1950 were related to health and welfare issues (Weir et al., 1988). During the 1949 steelworkers strike, a fact-finding board appointed by the President firmly supported the union position on bargaining, and the steel companies began to settle.
Health insurance and other fringe benefits were on their way to becoming a standard feature of employment. A number of unions continued to sponsor health centers and other programs, but most focused on the employer-sponsored programs. A further important boost to these programs came in 1954 when the Internal Revenue Code made it clear that employers' contributions for health benefit plans were generally tax deductible as a business expense and were to be excluded from employees' taxable income. Between 1950 and 1965, employer outlays for health care rose from 0.5 to 1.5 percent of total employee compensation.17
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235989/
Good read if you are really interested in the subject and have the time
Today healthcare is a very costly part of employee compensation. You forgo personal wages in return for the employer paid portion of private insurance -- healthcare insurance benefits are a hidden tax on either profits or wages. It is a line cost item that is not identified and hidden in the economic stew (an oxymoron really). The problem is you cannot constitutionally mandate the healthcare benefit cost to be paid to the employee, then paid by him into a government operated healthcare scheme via a VAT or some other tax.
So in all likelihood, a universal mandated healthcare scheme would free up profits for businesses and increase the common workers' tax burdens. Businesses might be forced by competition to raise salaries to compete for the best employees and in some low end positions have to increase wages to maintain a minimal living standard for lower paid workers.
In layman terms: the minimum wage would need to increase to enable lower paid workers to pay the new taxes required for public universal healthcare. The mid-wage workers would be stuck between a rock and hard spot -- the market would determine their wage and they would have a new paradigm to deal with.
If you read the book, or parts of the 2nd chapter you will see this is an evolving argument of the last century. Rather than realigning the mess we drag our feet with debate and compromise while our society rots from within. The real enemy is ourselves.
Trump promised a TERRIFIC healthcare all citizens could afford. HORSESHIT.
@paul No, medical professionals are not going to take a cut in pay -- that just will not happen for obvious reasons. I don't want a surgeon that feels he is underpaid doing a half-ass job on me because he is late for his part time second job. You want to live in a low wage Eastern European nation that is your business.