Government 1B Week 7 Rising Health-Care and the State of Economy in WWII

Question 1: What are some of the factors that have contributed to rising health-care in the United States.

During World War II business’s were getting desperate for more labor, but the government wasn’t allowing the business’s to raise their wages to attract potential employees. An initiative solution to this issue was to provide health-care, which would attract more employees without raising wages. This seemed to stick, and it became the norm for companies to provide their employees with health-care. The companies pay for most medical bills, and in turn the employee doesn’t have to think about pricing. The obvious problem that arises from this system is the medical professionals take advantage of the employees lack of financial restraint. The employee doesn’t have to think about pricing, so he doesn’t. The company pays for the medical bills, and the medical professionals who get paid through insurance can raise their costs as high as they’d like.

Question 2: Evaluate the statement: “World War II was a time of great prosperity in the United States.

World War II was in no way a time of great prosperity in the US. Since it was war time 40% of the working force (namely the healthy men) were in the armed forces. The civilians not apart of the military were either jobless or working extremely labor intensive jobs to support those in the military. So while men were off fighting in the war the women and teenagers had to work long and strenuous hours to support them. That translates to 60% of the US population (excluding the jobless), putting in all their time and labor to support the 40%. As you can imagine that leaves very few economic benefits left over for the 60%, so basically no matter how hard someone worked they’d still most likely be poverty stricken because all of their efforts went towards assisting the war.