Welcome to Keith's night. Don't tread on anyone. This is how government solved. The health care crisis, medical insurance, that worked until government fixed it by Roderick T. Long. Today. We are constantly being told the United States faces, a health care crisis. Medical costs are too high and health insurance is Out Of Reach of the poor. The cause of this crisis is never made very clear, but the Cure is obvious to nearly
everybody. Government must step in to solve the Problem, 80 years ago, Americans were also told that their nation was facing a healthcare crisis. Then however, the complaint was that medical costs were too low and that health insurance was too accessible. But in that era to government stepped forward to solve the problem and boy, did they solve it. Just look at how they sell us today on the cost of employment is too low. So we're going to have a minimum
wage. So this way we help out the workers. So all they were doing was giving us a minimum Health Care price to help out the doctors and the medical insurance companies. It's really for our benefit in the late 19th and early 20th.
Centuries, one of the primary sources of Health Care and health insurance for the Working, Poor in Britain, Australia, and the United. It States was the Fraternal Society fraternal societies, called friendly Societies in Britain and Australia were voluntary Mutual Aid associations. Their descendants survive among us today in the forms of Shriners Elks Masons and similar organizations, but these no longer play. The central role in American Life.
They formerly did. As recently as nineteen twenty, over one quarter of all adult Americans were members of fraternal. Societies. The figure was still higher in Britain and Australia fraternal societies, where particularly popular among blacks and immigrants indeed. Teddy Roosevelt's famous attack on hyphenated Americans was motivated in part by hostility to the immigrants fraternal societies.
He and other Progressive saw to americanize immigrants by making them dependent for support on the Democratic State, rather than on their own independent ethnic communities. The principle behind the Fraternal societies was simple. A group of working-class people would form an association or join a local branch or Lodge of an existing Association and pay monthly fees into the association's.
Treasury individual members would then be able to draw on the pooled resources in time of need, the Fraternal societies, thus operated as a form of self help. Insurance companies, turn of the century. America offered a dizzying array of fraternal societies to choose from some cater, to a particular ethnic or religious group. Others did not many offered entertainment and social life, to their members or engaged in community service.
Some fraternal societies were run entirely by and for women the kinds of services from which members could choose often varied as well though. The most commonly, A offered were life, insurance disability insurance and Lodge practice large practice refers to an arrangement reminiscent of today's hmos, whereby a particular society or Lodge would contract with a doctor to provide medical care to its
members. The doctor received a regular salary on a retainer basis rather than charging per item members would pay a yearly fee and then call. All on the doctors Services as needed. If Medical Services were found unsatisfactory. The doctor would be penalized. And the contract might not be renewed. Lodge members.
Reportedly enjoyed the degree of customer control this system, afforded them and the tendency to overuse The Physician Services was kept in, check by the Fraternal societies own self policing. Lodge members who wanted to avoid future increases in premiums, were motivated to make sure that their A members were not abusing the system. Most remarkable was the low cost at which these Medical Services were provided at the turn of the century.
The average cost of Lodge practice to an individual member was between one and two dollars a year. A day's wage would pay for a Year's worth of Medical Care by contrast. The average cost of medical service on the regular Market was between one and two dollars per visit. Yet licensed Physicians, particularly those who did not come from.
Big name, medical schools, competed vigorously for Large contracts, perhaps because of the security they offered and this competition continued to keep costs low. This is what you get in places. You have much more of a free market, you get increased quality and lower costs over time, due to competition. So if you look at things like beverages, the average person has more choices of beverages than all the kings and queens of the past.
You also see an increase in Access and quality of things like cars computers. There's microphones radios, cell, phones, books, printers, air conditioners, fans, headphones, clothes, microwaves. And even in the healthcare industry, the less regulated sectors. Constantly are falling in price. For example, a Lasik eye surgery. So it's not until the state steps in and starts using coercion. And what would otherwise be voluntarily, funded, competing,
organizations do, what prices? Get out of control the response of the medical establishment? Which meant both in America and Britain was one of outrage, the institution of Lodge practice was denounced in harsh language and apocalyptic tones. We see the same thing in the banking industry. The banking establishment supports the biggest banking regulation, ever the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
So it's not the case that well, these people want the free market know, they hate competition and they love cartels as Milton Friedman. Always said the biggest enemies of the free market. Market are the intellectuals and businessmen such low fees. Many doctors charge were bankrupting. The medical profession. Allegedly, moreover many saw it as a blow to the Dignity of the profession that trained Physicians should be eagerly bidding for the chance to serve as the hirelings of the lower
class. Tradesmen. It was particularly detestable that such uneducated and socially inferior. People should be permitted to set. He's for the Physicians Services or to sit in judgment on professionals to determine whether their services had been satisfactory the government. They demanded must do something and so it did in Britain.
The state put an end to the evil of Lodge practice by bringing Health Care under political control, Physicians fees would now be determined by panels of trained professionals. IE the Physicians themselves rather than By ignorant patients. This is referred to, as regulatory capture to regulate the healthcare industry.
Who does the government go to? Well, the biggest people in the healthcare industry with the most amount of power and influence, who then structure the rules in such a way to benefit themselves and their cronies at the expense of the consumer State Finance, Medical Care. Edged out, launch practice those who are being forced to pay taxes for free health care, whether they want it or not.
Had little incentive to pay extra for Health Care through the Fraternal societies rather than using the government care. They had already paid for reminds me of National Defense, how the price constantly keeps going up and the service gets worse because the government has no incentive to provide a good product or service in America. We pay like 730 billion dollars a year and it keeps us less safe because they go around creating enemies and creating terrorists police cost.
Constantly keep going up the police or totally militarized, and they keep caging people from victimless crimes and not obeying lockdowns. All absolute nonsense, government increases costs and drastically decreases quality. In America, it took longer for the nation's Health Care system to be socialized. So the medical establishment had to achieve its ends more indirectly, but the essential was result was the same medical societies.
Like, the AMA impose sanctions on doctors, who dared to sign Lodge practice contracts. This might have been less effective if such a medical societies had not had access to government power. But in fact, thanks to government grants of privilege. They controlled the medical. Licensure procedure. Thus, ensuring that those in their disfavor would be denied, the right to practice medicine,
such licensure laws. Also offered the medical establishment, a less overt way of combating Lodge practice. It was during this period that the American Medical Association meet the requirements for medical licensure far more strict than they had previously been. So, just as you Wouldn't want licensing in the podcast world or the YouTube World, you'd have excuse me.
You'd have much fewer options. You'd have only a select group of people, getting all the attention, customers would have to pay more whether in the form of lower quality or longer, wait times or less content available. So licensing is evil, and people see this with what with voting, they say. Well, if you Have to have a driver's license to vote. Then you're really suppressing the vote.
Yeah, well, license to business and the economy is suppressing business and suppressing and suppressing economic growth. It was during this period that the American Medical Association, made the requirements for medical licensure far more strict than they had previously. Been there reason they claimed was to raise the quality of Medical Care. Well, if you want to increase quality, make sure you don't have people stomping out.
Petition by requiring licenses, but the result was that the number of Physicians fell competition, dwindled and medical fees. Rolls the vast pool of Physicians bidding for Lodge practice. Contracts had been abolished as with any Market. Good artificial restrictions on Supply created higher prices a particular hardship for the working class members of fraternal societies. The final death, blow to Lodge practice was struck by the Fraternal Society themselves.
The national Fraternal Congress attempting, like the AMA to reap the benefits of cartelization lobbied. For law laws decreeing, a legal minimum on the rates. For Eternal societies could charge just as Walmart, Doug McMullen and H Lee Scott. The last two CEOs have come out in favor of the minimum wage. Jeff Bezos is in The minimum wage big business, loves big government cuz they love cartels and hate competition. Unfortunately, for the lobbyists, the lobbying effort was successful.
The unintended consequence, was that the minimum rates laws, made the services of fraternal societies no longer competitive. Thus the national Fraternal Congress is lobbying efforts rather than creating a formidable, Mutual Aid, cartel, simply destroyed the Fraternal societies. Market Niche. And with with it, the opportunity for low-cost health care for the Working Poor. Why do we have a crisis in health care costs today? Because the government solved the last one, also.
It's important to make sure that what is currently in America is nothing close to a free market. First of all, you have the Food and Drug Administration, totally involved in making sure. And services don't get to Market unless a group of people have given it their stamp of approval. That, of course. Imagine if we had that in books. You can't publish a book. Unless the government agency has cleared the book of Being for the well-being of the masses.
Screw you, my body, my choice, my money, my choice. Here's a great part of the conscience of a liberal by Paul Krugman. He says, in 2004 government programs paid for 44% of Health Care in America. While private Insurance paid for only 36%. Most of the rest was out of pocket spending which exists everywhere. So in 2004 before, Bush's Medicare Part D and Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act was
implemented. Government was already paying forty four percent so that they love to lie that there was currently or previously a free market in healthcare. He also has this great quote. So you might ask, well, why would government try to create things like Here Medicaid, and these welfare systems when costs were so low.
Here's a, another part of the conscious of a liberal by Paul Krugman. He says it's not that the concepts of progressive taxation and the welfare state had yet to be invented or even implemented in other places in Germany, Otto von Bismarck, introduced old age, pensions unemployment insurance and even national health insurance in the 1880s. Big Bismarck acted out of political calculation, not compassion. He wanted. To head off, potential opposition to the Kaisers rule.
So many people will say, gosh, the government really is evil with this mass murder and kidnapping and funded by theft, but I do like the health care that it gives me an I do like the education that the daycare that my kids get to go to. So, I'm not really going to call the state out for what it is. Excellent work here by Roderick T long. Thank you for watching Keith, Mike. Don't tread on anyone.