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For decades, it was a solution that was supported by employees and employers. It was a period of shared prosperity across our country, and employer provided health insurance had become the backbone of the American Health Care system. You went to work for a company and your company supplied you with health care insurance. Simple.
It was a time of tight labor markets, and employers looked for any edge they could get to attract employees. They looked for any item that would increase the loyalty of their employees. Of course, the tax incentives provided by the federal government didn't hurt. (Health benefits were essentially tax free.) Employers were happy to provide the benefit for their employees.
The employees were happy as well. Year after year their health benefits would get better and better. The National Labor Relations Board made health benefits negotiable. Naturally, this led to the unions supporting employer backed health care, and they would press for further improvements as well. Any attempt to create government supplied universal health care was met with a simple question: why? Things were fine as far as all parties were concerned, and then 1980 came, and things started to go wrong.
Globalization was causing an explosion in world wide cheap labor. The pressure was on American companies to keep costs down. At the same time, health care premiums were exploding. Employers began to look for ways to deny health insurance to their employees, including reclassifying employees as "contractors" and using more part time employees. Other companies, like Wal-Mart, simply didn't provide insurance to the majority of their employees. Additionally, the quality of the benefits provided was falling.
The system was breaking down. Worst yet, there was nothing to step in and fill the void. The number of uninsured was increasing. I'm typing this in the past tense as if the problem has been solved, but it has not. It continues to this day.
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