>>82154891
No, it was actually a result of government regulation
During WW2 there was a labor shortage. Men were at the front, women were in factories but there was still a lot of work that wasn't getting done. The natural conclusion was to offer workers higher salaries, but with the limited labor pool that was zero sum and was going to drive up wages and fuel inflation. So after Congress passed the Stabilization Act of 1942. Employers, unable to provide higher salaries to attract or retain employees, began to offer insurance plans, including healthcare packages, as a benefit in kind.
It was thanks to Franklin Delano Roosevelt passing a law that made it illegal to offer higher wages during WW2 that lead directly to Employer provided health insurance as the default in America.
And Unions also helped cause the problem as the incentives of Union negotiations and tax rates. For the sake of easy math, if you are negotiating for workers that are recieving 100k a year an increase of 10%. If they recieve the money as cash they are being taxed at 25% for every dollar over 100k, so their on paper salary would go up to 110k and they would be taking home $7500. If instead the union negotiates they get 10k more worth of health insurance, and their Union health plan goes from Silver to Gold, or from Gold to Platinum, they get to enjoy every dollar of that 10k increase.
Reading Thomas Sowell would really help you understand the second and third order effects of government policy. I would reccomend Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One
"There are no solutions, only trade-offs. Any government policy that helps some people inevitably imposes costs on others, and sound policy evaluates those opportunity costs and incentives, not just good intentions."
