The Wartime Wage Freeze – American Healthcare Chronicles

I recently started building products focused on healthcare affordability in the US. As I was ramping up on a new space, the biggest question that sparked my curiosity was: how did we get here? I plan to write about this weekly with the goal of chronicling the decisions, accidents, and breakthroughs that built the US healthcare system. In 1940, only 9% of Americans had health insurance. A decade later, it was nearly 50%. By 1960, almost 70%. What changed? A wartime wage freeze. In 1942, FDR signed the Stabilization Act — freezing salaries to combat wartime inflation. With millions of men at war, labor was scarce and wages were surging. The freeze was a blunt fix for an urgent problem. But benefits were exempt. So employers competing for workers did the logical thing — they competed on health coverage instead. Henry Kaiser, owner of a construction company who was branching out into shipyards, was among the first to figure out how to cover his workers comprehensively, keeping his…