The Supreme Court recently closed its term with a ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, concerning the government’s mandate for employer provided insurance to cover contraception. Voting 5-4 that closely held corporations could be exempt from the mandate if it violates the sincerely held religious beliefs of the owners, the decision has generated a lot of heat in mainstream political discourse.
Conservatives claim it as a victory for religious freedom, while progressives denounce it as a blow against the rights of women. However, the framing here is awkward. The intersection of a cultural schism and relations between labor and capital raises a question: How did the status quo, where employers have insurance to think about and workers are expected to be on the lookout for their bosses personal beliefs, come to be in the first place?
Commonly forgotten in American history, as they conflict with the popular myth about modern capitalism somehow being a “free market” whether one thinks that good or ill, are the past more explicit interventions of the U.S. government. Of particular note is the National War Labor Relations Board, which during World War 2 placed wage controls on industrial workers. In the crackpot reasoning of the government appointed experts at the time, this was to prevent inflation. With government spending in overdrive due to the total war economy, plowing endless resources into production of military goods for the state, employers started to use health insurance as a perk, which the NWLRB ruled didn’t violate the controls.
After war footing shifted from WW2 to the Cold War, the IRS ruled that health insurance premiums employers paid were exempt from taxation. Having violently marginalized more radical labor organizations, setting a Devil’s Bargain of sorts between existing unions, large-scale business, and the government, the expectation was set. You worked for a big company and depended on them for health coverage, the corporations got extensive backing in the form of subsidies from the government, and the government got everyone’s tax dollars to pour into empire. Yes, your health coverage is an accident of decades of corporate state collusion, a diversion of what could have been income to do what you wanted to with into a tool of control.
Think about what could have been if the government had never done any of this. With labor power at full, no government butting in to deny your agency or concentrate the market, and no policy for your boss to micromanage, workers could simply take the dissolved surplus capital and handle the matter themselves. Perhaps labor unions could adapt, form their own insurance pools, and liberate women in the workforce from ever again having to care what anyone else thinks about them getting birth control. Despite professed views in the cramped political mainstream, interest on their part in such is scarce, as the fire on such issues is what lines their pockets and keeps people going to the polls.
With thought, the “culture war” reveals itself as a prison fight — forced by the guards.
Citations to this article:
- Brian Nicholson, Culture War as State Hobby, Newton, Iowa Daily News, 07/08/14
- Brian Nicholson, The Culture War as State Hobby, Before It’s News, 07/05/14
The real problem is that "government" is the major reason that US health care costs so much. Take government out of the picture and suddenly the cost of health care drops by a considerable margin for the very simple reason that where government does not provide, private enterprise will. And usually at a lower price!
Take the issue of prescription laws. Prescription laws give medical providers a legal government enforced monopoly over access to medical drugs. Much in the same way that our drug laws "encourage" criminals to provide drugs to addicts at a far higher price than what these same drugs would cost in a free market. To a somewhat lesser extent, doctors do use prescription laws as a means to increase their incomes through the same principle of being the only "legal" way that you can obtain medical drugs. Without prescription laws the issue of employer coverage of contraceptive drugs changes. Without prescription laws people will only visit the doctor when they decide to. Which is likely to be less often than what doctors would like as a lot of patient visits only happen because the doctor insists on it. Along with the implied threat that if the patient does not make the visit, they will lose legal access to the medical drugs that they are using… Which with the repeal of prescription laws would free people to make these sort of decisions for themselves.
It seems to me that private enterprises will only provide a service at a lower price in the absence of monopoly. Now that monopoly laws are not enforced, I am not so sure the the consumer would pay a lessor price.
I got the state hobby part, but it seems like you never got around to the culture war thought.