Social security and health care in the United States

Résumé du document

Even though Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have wanted a comprehensive Social Security system that would have covered every individual "from the cradle to the grave?, the system that was finally adopted by the United States in 1935 consisted only in unemployment and old-age insurance. Frances Perkins, the first woman cabinet member and Roosevelt's secretary of Labor, is the mother of this US Social Security system. Perkins and her team consulted numerous international experts, among which was the British expert William Henry Beveridge. A Committee advised FDR on the subject of health care in 1932. The purpose was to create a national insurance system for medical care. Everybody would pay a premium in the form of taxes and the government would pay everybody's medical expenses, drawing the money from the collected premiums.

Extraits

[...] Roosevelt and Perkins' Social Security Act was far from perfect. As it excluded “farm laborers and domestic servants” from the program, it de facto excluded a majority of the Black population from the program. The fact that the Black population could not benefit from the program was the reason why the bill could get the support of Southern pro-Jim Crow Congressmen. Nevertheless the program was a major step, one that would long be remembered in US history, of the most forward-looking pieces of legislation in the interest of wage earners in the entire history of the and one that could not be questioned by the Republicans in the following decades.[4] The architects of this program hoped they would be a stepping stone to national health insurance. [...]

[...] Commercial insurers primarily interested in generating profits screen for people in good health and charge very high rates for those with a medical or exclude them altogether. In 1993-1994, First Lady Hillary Clinton led an initiative to reform Health Care on behalf of her husband. In spite of a broad support by the population, the initiative was defeated by the Republicans and the private health insurance lobby. This failure contributed to the Republicans' 1994 electoral victory in Congress. It put an end to Clinton's liberal agenda. Will the new Obama administration try to pass a “revolutionary” health care bill? That is unlikely. [...]

[...] He proposed that all people of working age pay a weekly national insurance contribution. In return, benefits would be paid to people who were sick, unemployed, retired or widowed. Medicare is the social insurance program that provides health insurance coverage for people over 65. Medicaid provides health insurance for eligible individuals and families with low income and resources. Eisenhower could not and would not question it in 1952. The New Dealers knew probity was a crucial quality! They were famous for being incorruptible and completely selfless. [...]

[...] It is taken from the book Frances Perkins First Woman Cabinet Member by Bill Severn. Numerous theoretical as well as practical questions had to be answered. How would the system be organized? Could it be a federal system or would it have to be organized locally? How would the Social Security Committee win the support of Congress without which the bill would never become law? Perkins and her team consulted numerous international experts, among whom the British William Henry Beveridge.[1] A Committee in 1932 advised FDR on the subject of health care. [...]

[...] Critics and opponents will make it difficult to change the system. They still claim that National health care insurance is “socialism”. Their arguments have not changed much since FDR's time. The United States spends more than France of GDP) with a much inferior health care outcome. Paul Krugman, among other American intellectuals, calls for an ambitious health care reform with a single-payer system (only the state), that would be both fairer and more efficient. Bibliography and filmography - Sicko, Michael Moore - Sick, Jonathan Cohn, Harper Collins - The Conscience of a Liberal, Reclaiming America from the Right, Paul Krugman, Allen Page - Article “This Won't Hurt a Bit, Health Care Reform for Dummies”, John Cohn, The New Republic, February - Articles “Medicaid”, “Medicare” in Wikipedia William Henry Beveridge, (1879 1963) was a British economist and social reformer. [...]