History
The program was created in 1960. Employer sponsorship of health insurance in the United States became prevalent during World War II, as one of the few ways by which employers could escape wage and price control limitations on employee wages. The government originally proposed a system that would revolve around a dominant government-directed plan, but unions and employee associations, which had sponsored their own plans, protested. Reflecting the political pressure thus created, the Congress modified the Executive Branch proposal and all existing plans were "grandfathered" into the program. Thus, through what was essentially a historical accident and a political compromise, a system of competition among health plans driven by consumer choices was created.
Read more about this topic: Federal Employees Health Benefits Program
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)