Article July 20, 1918 Issue

The Bulletin of February 20 contains a news item to the...

Peter V. Ross—San Francisco, Cal.

The Bulletin

The Bulletin of February 20 contains a news item to the effect that Californians who do not believe in drugs nor rely upon medical doctors for healing, are opposed to compulsory health insurance. The article might well have gone farther and pointed out that other classes of citizens besides the "anti-drug believers" are opposing this kind of insurance in the form in which it is being put forward in California. In order to understand the reason for this opposition now springing up in all directions and from people in all walks of life, it is necessary only to examine into the nature of this system of insurance and ascertain how it would work if put into operation.

The general plan is to compel all employees whose earnings do not exceed one hundred dollars a month to insure against sickness. Employees and other persons whose incomes exceed one hundred dollars a month, or twelve hundred dollars a year, are still to enjoy their liberty and insure or not insure, as they please. The insurance entitles employees to part of their wages during illness, and affords them and their families also medical attention. The wage benefits, however, will not be paid if the system as now advocated prevails, unless the employee accepts the physician and medical service offered. In fact, the wage benefits are a secondary consideration. The leading feature is medicine and surgery, and these not only for the employee himself but for those dependent on him. Thereby the system is made operative not merely on the premises of the employer, but in the home and private relations of the employee.

In order to provide these wage and medical benefits, an enormous insurance fund must be raised and maintained. Experts say that about forty-five million dollars would be needed in California for the first year, and probably an increasing amount each year thereafter. Of that tremendous sum employers would be required to pay forty per cent, employees forty per cent, and taxpayers twenty per cent. These payments would be forced contributions.

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