1915 AALL Bill
In 1915, the American Association of Labor (AALL) drafted a bill for compulsory health insurance to benefit low-income workers. While the bill did not lead to federal legislation at its time, it was one of the first models for government-run health insurance.
Contents of the AALL Bill
People insured:
"German and English precedents are followed by including under compulsory insurance all manual workers, whatever their earnings, and in limiting compulsory insurance for other employees, mostly clerks and foremen, to persons earning less than $1,200 a year."
-1915 AALL Health Insurance Act
Benefits:
"Where the fund chooses the panel system, any legally qualified physician may join the panel, and the insured workmen shall have free choice among physicians undertaking insurance practice. Since this system may not prove practicable in all districts, freedom should be left to the funds to provide medical care through other methods, such as salaried physicians, among whom there should be reasonable free choice, through physicians responsible for specified districts, or through any other method approved by the Commission."
-1915 AALL Health Insurance Act
"On the assumption that 4 per cent of the wages will be required for the benefits provided in this draft, about what the German experience shows would be necessary, the total contributions for a man earning $600 would be $24 a year, or $2 a month. He would pay 80 cents a month, the employer 80 cents, the state 40 cents. Most mine hospital funds charge the employee $1 a month for medical attendance for sickness and trade accidents alone, usually including his family."
-1915 AALL Health Insurance Act
Life insurance:
"Funeral benefits are the most urgently felt insurance of the classes subject to this act. They are included in most compulsory foreign Systems, and are provided for in most systems existing in America. As one of the benefits under sickness insurance, their cost would be very small in proportion to what it is at present, and also in proportion to the total amount of benefits. The present great cost of premium collection for burial insurance will be done away with and the added cost of administration of the system will be negligible, while the relief afforded to the poorer classes of working people, in comparison to the heavy cost of securing burial insurance at present, will go far towards paying their share of the contributions for all benefits."
-1915 AALL Health Insurance Act
Cash benefit:
"A cash benefit shall be paid beginning with the fourth day of disability on account of illness; it shall equal two-thirds (66-2/3 per cent) of the weekly wages of the insured member. It shall be paid only during continuance of disability, and shall not be paid to the same person for a period of over twenty-six weeks in any consecutive twelve months."
-1915 AALL Health Insurance Act