Health insurance : its relation to the public health / by B.S. Warren, and Edgar Sydenstricker.

  • Warren, B. S. (Benjamin S.), 1871-1935.
Date:
1916
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health insurance : its relation to the public health / by B.S. Warren, and Edgar Sydenstricker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HEALTH IHSURAHCE STANDARDS. [Recommended by the Committee on Social Insurance American Association for Labor Legislation.] After many conferences for discussion and revision of proposals, the Committee on Social Insurance of the American Association for Labor Legislation formulated in the summer of 1914 a tentative state¬ ment of the essential lines which it purposes to follow in the drafting of a health insurance bill. The statement was as follows: 1. To be effective health insurance should be compulsory, on the basis of joint contributions of employer and employee and the public. 2. The compulsory insurance should include all wage workers earning less than a given annual sum, where employed with sufficient regularity to make it practicable to compute and collect assessments. Casual and home workers should, as far as practicable, be included within the plan and scope of a compulsory system. 3. There should be a voluntary supplementary system for groups of persons (wage¬ workers or others) who for practical reasons are kept out of the compulsory system. 4. Health insurance should provide for a specified period only, provisionally set at 26 weeks (one-half a year), but a system of invalidity insurance should be combined with health insmance so that all disability due to disease will be taken care of in one law, although the funds should be separate. 5. Health insurance on the compulsory plan should be carried by mutual local funds jointly managed by employers and employees under public supervision. In large cities such locals may be organized by trades with a federated bureau for the medical relief. Establishment funds and existing mutual sick funds may be per¬ mitted to carry the insurance where their existence does not injure the local funds, but they must be under strict government supervision. 6. Invalidity insurance should be carried by funds covering a larger geographical area comprising the districts of a number of local health insurance funds. The ad¬ ministration of the invalidity fund should be intimately associated with that of the local health funds and on a representative basis. 7. Both health and invalidity insurance should include medical service, supplies, necessary nursing, and hospital care. Such provision should be thoroughly adequate, but its organization may be left to the local societies under strict governmental control. 8. Cash benefits should be provided by both invalidity and health insurance for the insured or his dependents during such disability. 9. It is highly desirable that prevention may be emphasized so that the introduction of a compulsory health and invalidity insurance system shall lead to a campaign of health conservation similar to the safety movement resulting from Workmen’s com¬ pensation .