Article August 31, 1918 Issue

The June issue of The Star refers to the indorsement of...

Peter V. Ross—San Francisco, Cal.

The Star

The June issue of The Star refers to the indorsement of compulsory health insurance by the New York State Federation of Labor. In this connection it is worthy of note that the New York legislature has recently adjourned without putting this type of insurance into operation in that state. A bill proposing such a measure was introduced into the legislature, but it received so little attention and support that it could not so much as get out of the committee to which it was referred.

Massachusetts and Maryland, as well as the United States Government, had already rejected compulsory health insurance before New York thus turned it down. Opposition to the measure, so the Massachusetts commission found, developed among those labor leaders who had given it most study, and among those classes generally who would be most vitally affected by it. The physicians in both Massachusetts and New York declined to indorse the insurance, presumably because it would lower medical efficiency and would not improve health conditions.

Altogether, then, the compulsory health insurance movement in the East may be said to be on the decline. In California it is still at its height, although opposition is becoming so strong from those who have given the plan an unbiased investigation, that it is already more than doubtful whether the constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to adopt the system can be carried at the November election. The first practical objection to the proposition is that it will not reach those people who most need help. The sick, the unemployed, and even the irregularly employed and shifting population will not come under the insurance at all. There is the danger, also, that all employees may be subjected to medical examination, just as are applicants for life insurance, which will result in many of them being rejected and denied employment.

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