(HealthNewsDigest.com)
- Don't worry. This is not another piece about Obamacare. Instead, we'll go
back to basics, and see if health insurance can ever satisfy the demands of the
payers, the providers, and the patients. It's not as if people haven't been
working on this for awhile. The notion of health insurance stems from the
so-called "friendly societies," and dates back to the very dawn of
the Industrial Revolution.
Arguably, those associations can trace their own origins
back to the burial societies of ancient Greek and Roman artisans. In the Middle
Ages, they morphed into the trade guilds of Europe, and expanded their mutual
assistance programs to cover the financial burdens of illness.
But the founder of modern health insurance is Otto von
Bismarck, chancellor of Germany, who in 1883 passed the Reichsversicherungsverordnung
(Reich Insurance Act). As such, it became mandatory for certain segments of the
workforce to pay premiums in support of sickness funds. This effort, and the
rest of its early social welfare programs, was a means for the government to
counteract the appeal of Communism, especially to those on the lower economic
strata.
However, it would take another German chancellor--better
known than von Bismarck--to inflate this concept into universal
government-controlled health care. His name was Adolf Hitler…..To Read More….
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