Blame FDR for our healthcare disaster

Published July 6, 2019 4:00am ET



Left, Right, and in between, everyone can agree that our employer-provided health insurance industry is failing. Even if the overwhelming majority of Americans wish to keep their private health insurance, the market itself issues perverse incentives and leaves millions of Americans in the dust. Republicans rightly blame Obamacare for the consolidation of the health insurance cartel, but the true origins of our healthcare fracas began with Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Contrary to popular belief, the New Deal likely extended the Great Depression. FDR imposed confiscated gold, hiked tax rates, and corralled the entire agriculture industry into a cartel. But most onerous were his federal wage controls and regulations which careened us into the insurance disaster we’re in today.

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