Various factors made American businesses and their managers to offer health care services to their employees. The factors motivated the businesses in providing health insurance services and other health benefits to the employees. Some States in the U.S. like Pennsylvania during the late 1800s and early 1900s was a health hazard to work, with a quarter-million calamities recorded in a year (Kongstvedt, 2012). The trades were so dangerous, and the accidents were gruesome that severe injuries were suffered by the workers. A publication of the International Association of Factory Inspectors had some issues from the steel factories: an explosion once occurred in the Butler County steel mill that forced a stream of hot metal on the workmen and some were literally cooked. The conditions made the employers consider offering health services to the employees. The employer-based insurance policy has roots in the industrial past of the U.S. After the civil war, individuals who worked in the most dangerous environments like steel industry, roads, mining, and lumber had access to the company’s doctors, often referred to as industrial clinics. As the insurance companies grew more complex, the insurers began selling accident policies that included death and burial and disability benefits to the managers. The insurance health policies did not resemble the current health coverage but provided a base for the current health welfare of the employees. As trade unions became more active in the late 1800s, the unions began taking their personal protections, having noted that the workers needed economic protection against losses in the workplace. The policy was to cover the factory workers and the tradesmen (Kongstvedt, 2012). The growing concern for health led to fraternal organizations and some mutual protection societies to offer limited health coverage to for their ill members. The modern group insurance policy is traced back in the 1910 when retailer Montgomery Ward solicited what was currently referred to as the nation’s first multi-workers health insurance policy. The strategy was arrived at through a plan laid down by the London Guarantee and Accident Co. situated in New York. The nation was years away from a proper health plan that would pay for hospitalization and medical care of the workers. No plan existed in the 1900s, and even primitive surgeries took place in the homes (Visser, Danielson & Blumberg, 2014). Hospitals were homes for the mental patients that were operated by the nuns and nurses, treating specified religious or ethnic groups. The circumstances made various businesses to put strategies to help the workers (Visser et al., 2014). The aftermath of the Second World War enabled the penetration of health care provision by the employees.The plan and choice of the care have greatly influenced health care in America today. The science of medical care has positively developed, and the debate over who is responsible to pay the health care was fomenting. On the negative, the health insurance has led to unpaid hospital bills that have further caused bankruptcy, late mortgage payments, and outpacing credit-card bills. Paul Starr notes in the journal that the arguments that health insurance policy would yield savings for the society were a strategy meant to please the business. The current trend is that health insurance is compulsory in the U.S. for every worker, though the policy is proving costly to the workers. Health insurers currently have control over the pricing of the benefits making the doctors be worried about the policy. The development of the health care cover by the employees has enabled the current American citizens to enjoy a wide variety of insurance cover depending on the socio-economic status. Currently, there exist two programs that are administered by State Government and the Federal Government that insures more than 105 million U.S. citizens. The number is estimated to increase by the end of 2015 as millions of the citizens are currently eligible for Medicaid. The Act was passed in as the 2010 Affordable Care Act (Smith et al., 2013).
- Kongstvedt, Peter. (2012). Essentials of Managed health care. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Barlett
Publishers. - Smith, M., Saunders, R., Stuckhard, L., & McGinnis, J. (Eds). (2013). Best care at low cost: the
path to continuosly learning health care in America. Washington, DC: National
Academic Press. - Visser, S. N., Danielson, M.L., Bitsko, R. H., Holbrook, J.R., Kogan, M. D., & Blumberg, S. J.
(2014). Trends in the Parent report of health care provider diagnosed and medicated
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: United States, 2003-2011. Journal of Child and
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