Milton Friedman on Medicine and health care
It came about because during World War II you had wage and price controls. One bad piece of legislation leads to other bad pieces of legislation. We had wage and price controls, and yet we had a real boom because of the pressure for war production. In the process, employers found it hard to get workers. … But they couldn’t pay higher wages, and so they started off with special additions that weren’t covered by the rules and regulations. And they found that one of the most popular additions they could offer was health care. And so health care spread.
Context. From a November 2005 interview with Peter Robinson, conducted for the World Health Congress and printed in the Hoover Digest as “How to Cure Health Care.” Asked why most medical payments are made by third parties. The ellipsis marks Robinson’s interjection (“A lot of the manpower was overseas fighting the war.”) and Friedman’s “Yes, that’s true also. They had a lot of woman power.” He goes on to say that Congress later exempted employer-provided health care from taxation.
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Milton Friedman, “How to Cure Health Care” (Interview by Peter Robinson for the World Health Congress, November 21, 2005; printed in Hoover Digest 2006 No. 4, 2005). https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/wartime-wage-controls-employer-health-care-spread-2005
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He also said
In general, I have little sympathy with trade unions. They have done immense harm by restricting access to jobs, denying excluded workers the opportunity to make the most of their abilities, and forcing them to take less satisfactory jobs. Yet surely in the present instance they are right that it is inequitable for the Government retroactively to void contracts freely arrived at. The way to reduce the monopoly power of unions is to remove the special legal immunities they are now granted, not to replace one concentrated power by another.
Context. From the second of two New York Times op-ed essays on the wage and price controls, October 1971, on what enforcing the Phase II pay board and price board would do to ordinary people.
Morality and Controls: IIColumn, 1971, The New York Times, October 29, 1971; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Senate, October 29, 1971, p. 38202, introduced by Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, who dates the two essays to “the October 28 and 29 editions of the New York Times”. The reprint heads it only “Morality and Controls”; the date is the senator’s., Congressional Record, October 29, 1971, p. 38202Checked against the sourceRead the originalThe answer to “Why now?” is straightforward—yet I know from bitter experience how hard it is to persuade anyone other than an economist that so simple an answer can be correct. Nineteen seventy-three is different from other peacetime years because, for the first time since World War II, the U.S. has had extensive price and wage controls. The key to today’s shortages is the price freeze ordered by President Nixon on Aug. 15, 1971.
Context. From a Newsweek column written during the 1973 oil shortages, nine weeks into the Arab oil embargo and more than two years after President Nixon froze wages and prices on August 15, 1971.
Why Now?Column, 1973, Newsweek (December 31, 1973); reprinted in full in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, January 24, 1974, p. 801, introduced by Representative John M. Ashbrook, who gives the issue as “the December 31, 1973 issue of Newsweek”, and reprinted again the same day at pp. 807 to 808 by Representative Earl F. Landgrebe, Congressional Record, January 24, 1974, p. 801Checked against the sourceRead the originalAm I not entitled to sell my goods or my labor for what I consider them worth as long as I do not coerce anyone to buy? Is it morally wrong for Chile to expropriate the property of Anaconda Copper—i.e., to force it to sell its copper mines for a price less than its value; but morally right for the U.S. Government to force the worker to sell his labor for less than its value to him and to his employer?
Context. From the second of two New York Times op-ed essays on the wage and price controls, October 1971, on what enforcing the Phase II pay board and price board would do to ordinary people.
Morality and Controls: IIColumn, 1971, The New York Times, October 29, 1971; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Senate, October 29, 1971, p. 38202, introduced by Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, who dates the two essays to “the October 28 and 29 editions of the New York Times”. The reprint heads it only “Morality and Controls”; the date is the senator’s., Congressional Record, October 29, 1971, p. 38202Checked against the sourceRead the original
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