Working Paper No. 91, The Emergence Of Industrial ‘Sabotage’ In The Evolution American Health Insurance

This inquiry seeks to establish that over the years the American health insurance industry has evolved in the direction of offering more and more disadvantages versus advantages to consumers as holders of insurance policies as well as healthcare products and services. In the tradition of Thorstein Veblen, this tendency should be considered as an institutional evolution that can be traced back in time to its origins in mutual aid societies and lodge practices. With the industrialization of the American economy, the healthcare industry exhibits signs of advancing, and but one indicator of this advance is that insurance plans became formalized. This inquiry advances the position that as America’s industrialization has continued inexorably and per capital incomes have increased, forms of industrial ‘sabotage’ have emerged concomitantly with the growing power of institutions, especially those focused upon offering health insurance.