How Does This Strike
You?
This newspaper has worked out a little employes’ disability
insurance scheme all on its own which may lack much of being perfect, but which
is better than none at all.
Each employe of The Independent sets aside 25 cents
a week from his or her wages for the disability fund. I supplement the fund by
a like amount, putting in 25 cents for each 25 cents put in by the employes.
This money is deposted in a local bank to the account of The Independent
Employes’ Disability.
Out of this fund will be paid the doctor and medical
bills of any employe who is disabled by sickness or accident. In addition to
such medical service and supplies the disabled employe will be paid $1 per day
while sick or disabled, so long as the fund will suffice for this payment.
Upon
leaving the employ of The Independent an employe is entitled to withdraw from
the fund every cent he has put into it, less any actual benefit he may have
derived from the fund. In other words an employe who puts up 25 cents a week
and never has occasion to receive any money from the fund will get his money
back dollar for dollar when he sees fit to terminate the agreement. If you like
this scheme you may try it in your own shop; there are no strings, patents or
copyrights on it. It has this advantage over industrial insurance. The man who
pays 25 cents a week to an insurance company has to get sick or die to get his
money back. By The Independent’s plan the employe is encouraged to lay up
something for a rainy day and the encouragement is genuine, The Independent
putting up for him just as much as he puts up for himself.
-=-
From The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C.,
April 25, 1919
What New York Has
Done For Its Workers. . . Here Is a Suggestion for Legislation for North
Carolina To Get Busy With
By passing the workmen’s health insurance bill, the New York
Senate has just taken the most advanced legislative action in the history of
the United States looking to the protection of the working population against
the hazard of sickness.
The purpose of the bill as passed is to conserve the health
of the workers by establishing, under state supervision, funds jointly
supported and managed by the employers and employees out of which workers in
time of temporary sickness will receive benefits both in cash and medical care.
These benefits include a cash payment of two-thirds of wages, up to $8 weekly,
during temporary illness or extended disability not covered by workmen’s
compensation, also medical and surgical treatment and supplies, hospital
service, nursing attendance and dental care, and in addition, a burial benefit
of $100.
There is a special provision for maternity benefits. Working
mothers and wives of working men who are insured will be given pre-natal care
and adequate medical and obstetrical and nursing care at childbirth. For
wage-earning mothers there is provided in addition a cash maternity benefit for
two weeks before and six weeks after childbirth in order that they may be able
to stop work at this time.
By making the health insurance system universal, with all profit-making casualty companies eliminated, the cost to the insured workers will be only about 20 cents weekly in order to secure the full cash and medical benefits. Employers who share equally with the workers in the cost have figured that their share will be about 1 per cent of the pay roll.
A prominent New York manufacturer, in urging the passage of
the bill, declared that employers are now often paying half-sick workers 100
per cent wages for 50 per cent efficiency.
“The amount now expended by the employer,” he said, “because
of sickness among his employees, for which he gets no adequate return, is
probably as much as the premiums he would have to pay under this workmen’s
health insurance bill which, as far as our industry is concerned, cannot exceed
one-half per cent of the cost of our commodity.”
The state merely bears the cost of general administration as
in workmen’s compensation.
Free choice of physicians by the patient is permitted, and,
as passed, the bill was amended to meet suggestions of the medical profession
designed to safeguard their ethical and economic interests.
In nine states legislative commissions have been studying sickness conditions with a view to health insurance laws. Their reports unanimously show appalling annual wage losses, inefficiency and dependency due to illness, while medical facilities within the reach of sick wage earners are everywhere conspicuously inadequate. As the Ohio Commission declares: “the only just and effective solution of the problem is health insurance legislation.”
The progressive Republicans and Democrats in the New York
Senate joined forces to bring about the victory for the health insurance bill.
In this they were aided by the Governor, who placed health insurance foremost
among pressing measures of reconstruction, and by the leading newspapers of the
state. In the campaign for the health insurance bill a powerful array of civic,
social service and women’s organizations, far-sighted employers and physicians,
together with the State Federation of Labor, worked as a unit for this legislation,
which they declared to be “the next step following workmen’s compensation.”
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