Hospitals, Insurance, and the American Labor Movement: The Case of New York in the Postwar Decades

Journal of Policy History

Volumn 9, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 74-95

  Rosner, David ^a   Markowitz, Gerald ^b  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

^b CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84937269935     PISSN: 08980306     EISSN: 15284190     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0898030600005832     Document Type: Article

References (73)

1. This essay was adopted from Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, “Seeking Common Ground: A History of Labor and Blue Cross,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 16 (Winter 1991): 695–718.
2. See “Phone Strike Centered on Issue of Health Care,” Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1989, 1.
3. “Facing Off over Health Care Benefits,” Wall Street Journal, August 11, 1989, B1.
4. “Phone Strike Centered on Issue of Health Care,” Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1989, 1.
5. See also “NYNEX Reaches Accord with Striking Unions,” Wall Street Journal, November 14, 1989, A3.
6. Arthur B. Reeve, “The Death Roll of Industry,” Charities and the Commons 17(1907): 791.
7. Editorial, “Slaughter by Accident,” The Outlook 78 (October 8, 1904): 359.
8. “A Strike for Clean Bread,” The Survey 24 (June 18, 1910): 483–488
9. “Investigations have disclosed the Fact that Unhealthy and Poisonous Bread is Made in Non-Union Bake Shops,” The Woman's Label League Journal, June 1913, 13
10. See also David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, “The Early Movement for Occupational Safety and Health,” in Judith Leavitt and Ronald Numbers, eds., Sickness and Health in America, 2d ed. (Madison, Wis., 1985), 507–521.
11. See also David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, eds., Dying for Work: Workers' Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America (Bloomington, Ind., 1987)
12. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, eds., “Slaves of the Depression: Workers' Letters about Life on the Job (Ithaca, N.Y., 1987) for other work detailing the concerns of workers in safety and health in the twentieth century.
13. David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor (New York, 1987), 192.
14. Anna Kalet, “Voluntary Health Insurance in New York City,” American Labor Legislation Review, June 1916, 142
15. quoted in Edgar Sydenstricker, “Existing Agencies for Health Insurance in the United States,” Bulletin No. 212, United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 1917 (Washington, D.C., 1917), 430.
16. Anna Kalet, “Voluntary Health Insurance in New York City,” American Labor Legislation Review, June 1916, 143.
17. See also H. C. Chapin, The Standard of Living in New York City (New York, 1914), 192. In other studies of other communities, it was found during the early decades of the century that upward of 60 percent of workers had health insurance plans either through unions or lodges.
18. See Sydenstricker, “Existing Agencies for Health Insurance,” 433.
19. Sydenstricker, “Existing Agencies for Health Insurance,” 434.
20. See Joan B. Trauner, “From Benevolence to Negotiation: Prepaid Health Care in San Francisco, 1850–1950,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Francisco, 1977, for a detailed discussion of the centrality of the fraternal societies in the development of prepaid care in that city.
21. See also Sydenstricker, “Existing Agencies for Health Insurance,” 469. Sydenstricker pointed out the difficulty of establishing accurate data on the overall importance of the fraternal and union plans and that few studies had been conducted to determine their adequacy. But he believed that existing data suggested that the percentage of workers who had some form of health insurance was large (432–34).
22. Sydenstricker, “Existing Agencies for Health Insurance,” 471.
23. Arguments abound among historians as to the reasons that such organizations as the Knights of Labor or the American Federation of Labor opposed government involvement in social protection for workers and their dependents. Some maintain that American labor came to maturity well before the development of an effective central state, thereby creating a philosophy of independence. Others see American beliefs in laissez-faire and individualism as being the major influence; still others explain the opposition to government arising from the pluralistic nature of the membership in the American labor movement. See Michael Rogin, “Voluntarism: The Political Functions of an Anti-Political Doctrine,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 15 (July 1962): 521–535
24. cited in Gwendolyn Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), chap. 1.
25. Paul Starr, “Transformation in Defeat: The Changing Objectives of National Health Insurance, 1915–1980,” in Ronald L. Numbers, ed., Compulsory Insurance: The Continuing Debate (Westwood, Conn., 1982), 120.
26. Thomas Dublin, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860 (New York, 1979).
27. Robert Asher, in Rosner and Markowitz, eds., Dying for Work.
28. Alan Derickson, Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891–1925 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988).
29. Margaret C. Klem, Prepayment Medical Care Organizations, Federal Security Agency, Social Security Board, Bureau of Research and Statistics, Bureau Memorandum Number 55, Washington, D.C., June 1944, 117.
30. Margaret C. Klem and Margaret F. McKiever, Management and Union Health and Medical Programs, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service Publication no. 329, Washington, D.C., 1953.
31. Klem and McKiever, Management and Union Health and Medical Programs, 7.
32. Dan Fox notes the developing relationship between labor and organized medicine in the 1950s. It appears from this correspondence that, in New York at least, the relationship can be traced to the 1930s and the debates around Workmen's Compensation. See Daniel Fox, Health Policies, Health Politics: The British and American Experience, 1911–1985 (Princeton, 1986), 195–197.
33. See Woll to Elliott, May 1, 1934 (Elliott Papers, Blue Cross Archives; hereafter referred to as Elliott Papers).
34. Also, Anon to Arthur Bedell, May 3, 1934, Elliott Papers.
35. Elliott to Woll, January 31, 1935, Elliott Papers. “I am sure that it is the opinion of the men in medicine that the workmanshould receive sufficient compensation for their labors to enable them to provide themselves with the necessities of life, including the reasonable compensation for needed medical care,” Elliott concluded.
36. Woll to Elliott, February 5, 1935, Elliott Papers.
37. Empire Blue Cross Archives, New York City.
38. See, for example, Murray Sargent, director of New York Hospital, to Louis Pink, November 22, 1947, complaining to the president of Blue Cross that Local 65 has organized its own “Security Plan” covering 15,000 workers and 30,000 more dependents. Pink replied that Sargent should not worry too much about the extension of this plan to more members because of the poor experience such union-sponsored plans had after the first year. “I do not think this sort of thing is too serious unless it should grow, and I do not think it will.” See Pink to Sargent, November 25, 1947, in Pink Papers.
39. Report of UAW-CIO Health-Committee, 7th Annual Convention, UAW-CIO, Chicago, August 1942.
40. Louis H. Pink, “New York Blue Cross Sets Pace for Employer-Union Cooperation,” address before Hospital Association of New York State, June 11,1946, Pink Papers, Blue Cross Archives.
41. Saul Mills to Louis Pink, March 16, 1943, Pink Papers.
42. See Conference Notes, “April 12, 1943, Saul Mills and Martin Segal representing CIO Council. Mr. Pink, Van Dyk, Sesan, Thomson, Keller, deSocarras, Breed,” in Pink Papers.
43. Ossip Walinsky to Louis Pink, June 17, 1946, Pink Papers. He noted that “the hospitalization service is represented right in our office” and “the records of all shop employees are constantly being checked as against the union membership on our records.”
44. New York Times, April 2, 1947, 16.
45. See also New York Times, April 8, 1947, 36. Here Blue Cross acknowledged the importance of this agreement and went on to note the “inclusion of hospitalization plans in the welfare programs of many unions.”
46. See Martin Shefter, “Political Incorporation and the Extrusion of the Left: The Insertion of Social Forces into American Politics,” (manuscript) to be published in Studies in American Political Development, vol. 1, for a fascinating and detailed account of the politics of New York City in the postwar period.
47. Robert Tilove, “Recent Trends in Health and Welfare Plans,” Proceedings of New York University Third Annual Conference on Labor, [c. 1950], 145.
48. See Leon Fink and Brian Greenberg, “Organizing Monteftore,” in Susan Reverby and David Rosner, eds., Health Care in America: Essays in Social History (Philadelphia, 1979).
49. New York Times, May 20, 1956, 88.
50. New York Times, November 19, 1957, 35.
51. New York Times, October 1,1957, 35.
52. New York Times, November 19, 1957, 35.
53. New York Times, January 6,1958, 58.
54. New York Times, December 27, 1957, 18. Given this kind of opposition, it is not surprising that the New York State Insurance Commissioner rejected Blue Cross's rate-increase request at the end of January 1958.
55. New York Times, June 3, 1958, 33
56. see also New York Times, June 8, 1958, E9. Bernard Greenberg, an economist for the United Steel Workers of America, spoke on behalf of the State CIO Council and the State Federation of Labor: “Labor in New York insists that Blue Cross policies must be directed away from the single-minded concern with meeting unquestionably every demand of the hospitals and toward a balanced view which impartially gives equal weight to the needs of hospitals, subscribers and the public interest.”
57. New York Times, June 18, 1958, 1.
58. New York Times, May 10,1959, 69
59. New York Times, June 10, 1959, 38.
60. New York Times, May 6, 1959, 43.
61. Fink and Greenberg, “Organizing Montefiore,” 226–244.
62. New York Times, May 22, 1959, 14. One of the first labor spokesmen to give testimony at the hearings over Blue Cross rate increases in May 1959 was Leon Davis, whose hospital workers were then in the midst of a vicious and prolonged struggle with the voluntaries. He demanded that the hearing be adjourned until the strike was settled.
63. New York Times, May 23, 1959, 50.
64. New York Times, June 21, 1959, 1. In the end, Blue Cross substantially prevailed against this opposition and the State Insurance Commissioner granted an increase of 26.5 percent.
65. In the late 1960s hospitals and Blue Cross would become the focus of academic and activist critiques. See, e.g., Sylvia Law, Blue Cross: What Went Wrong? (New Haven, 1974)
66. various publications and pamphlets of the Health Policy Advisory Center (Health PAC), especially The American Health Empire (New York, 1971).
67. New York Times, May 23, 1959, 50.
68. Selig Greenberg, “Crisis in the Hospitals,” The Progressive, May 1961, 33.
69. New York Times, September 27, 1959, IV:9.
70. New York Times, September 21, 1959, 1, 22.
71. New York Times, December 31, 1959, 19.
72. New York Times, April 30, 1960, 1, 10.
73. New York Times, August 3, 1960, 31.