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Businesses were smart, though, and instead they began to use benefits to compete. Specifically, to offer more, and more generous, health care insurance.

Then, in 1943, the Internal Revenue Service decided that employer-based health insurance should be exempt from taxation. This made it cheaper to get health insurance through a job than by other means.

After World War II, Europe was devastated. As countries began to regroup and decide how they might provide health care to their citizens, often government was the only entity capable of doing so, with businesses and economies in ruin. The United States was in a completely different situation. Its economy was booming, and industry was more than happy to provide health care.

This didn’t stop President Truman from considering and promoting a national health care system in 1945. This idea had a fair amount of public support, but business, in the form of the Chamber of Commerce, opposed it. So did the American Hospital Association and American Medical Association. Even many unions did, having spent so much political capital fighting for insurance benefits for their members. Confronted by such opposition from all sides, national health insurance failed — for not the first or last time.