VOL. LV

NUMBER 2

T

HE recent effort to force a system of compulsory health insurance upon the wage-earners of this country has brought that important question before the people in several states within the last few weeks. Bills of a uniform character have been simultaneously introduced in the eleven legislatures in session this year. Especially active are the advocates of the system in the two great industrial states of New York and Massachusetts.

This proposed legislation-avowedly offered as a cure-all for helpless poverty -is pressed without regard to the opposition to precipitate action by organized labor, the only channel through which the wage-earner's voice can be heard, and without adequate investigation of what is being done in the United States by voluntary agencies at the prsent time. As to the actuarial soundness of the plan so insistently recommended, there are grave doubts, since the preponderance of opinion among the insurance experts is that the assessments provided for in its provisions will in no wise cover the stipulated liberal benefits.

The propagandists of the social insurance movement have been quick to seize upon the popular but superficial illustration of Germany's great efficiency, as evidenced in the present war. The health and strength of that nation and its ability to stand so long

an endurance test have afforded the advocates of such legislation in the United States the opportunity to credit the general power of its military system to its social institutions, including of course health insurance.

Other contributing factors, such as the general sturdiness of the race, good habits, plain, simple, wholesome living, etc., are not taken into consideration, any more than are the years of preparation and systematization by the general government, for the great conflict which was sure to come.

It should be something of a shock to those interested in constructive efforts to learn that the self-styled "first advocate" of social insurance in this country, I. M. Rubinow, in an article entitled "A Socialist Remedy for Unemployment," ("New Review," Nov. 15, 1915), states:

"Twelve years ago, when I began to preach social insurance, I was a man with a new idea in this country. . . After all, social ills, like bodily ills, have only one true remedy, though it is not always known in time, and if we Socialists are at all right, these remedies must be in line with our philosophy."

Not withstanding the objections to the compulsory health insurance plan, it cannot be denied that probably the greatest ameliorative social system needed in the United States would be