[Michael Arnold Glueck and Robert J. Cihak, Newsmax.com] Most of our current health system woes originated in World War II when the government controlled wages and prices.

To attract needed workers in the war years, some corporate employers offered health insurance benefits as a supplement to wages, deducting the benefits from taxable income as an expense of doing business.

But this tax relief was only available to the corporate employer and not to the individual worker. The result: 25 years after the start of WWII, the proportion of the population covered with medical insurance had exploded by more than six times, from about 10 percent to 65 percent.


When the highest marginal income tax rate was 91 percent, this seemed great to the workers receiving the benefits. Corporate employees could use medical services with much less personal direct cost. And, naturally, they did, often assuming the services were free or prepaid and just waiting to be utilized.

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