Lessons From the Progressive Era: The Worker Compensation Roadmap To Single-Payer Health Insurance in California

By “Worker” Dedicated to Public Domain

Single-Payer Health Insurance should be a no-brainer. The United States pays twice as much for health insurance as anywhere else in the world, for inferior health care, because we refuse to join the rest of the civilized world and enact single-payer health insurance. Politically, single-payer, or “Medicare-for-All” is not going to happen with a divided Congress and a President opposed to the idea. But it is possible to enact in the near future at the state level.

Here, I offer an historical roadmap for achieving single-payer in California, based on the enactment of worker compensation in California, during the Progressive Era, over a century ago. A similar balance of special interests is involved, and a similar constitutional issue.

A Dangerous Time

Bodies of workers who jumped from windows to escape the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 (Cornell U. — Public Domain)

As dangerous as work is now, it was much more hazardous in the Nineteenth Century, without any regulation or safety net. What happened to the many workers who were injured or killed, so that they could no longer work? There was no compensation, no disability insurance, no safety net…