The claim by Tea Party activists and Republicans and conservatives that the Constitution does not allow national health care has been shown to be incorrect by the revelation that in 1798, the Founding Fathers passed legislation through Congress, signed by President John Adams, that provided for mandatory health care coverage on merchant marine sailors, paid for by a one percent tax on their incomes, in order to protect their health from illness and injuries, and therefore providing enough of a work force for the all important activity of foreign commerce!
Federal maritime hospitals were built in all the major American ports to provide medical services, and they were financed by the mandatory health care tax on the sailors!
Eventually, the service was expanded to cover commerce and ships on the Mississippi River and the Ohio River. Over time, it became the Public Health Service, which is still in existence today!
What the US government did in the 1790s is the method used by all European democratic governments today to insure that all citizens have health care, including the mandated taxes for their own good, to insure health care, rather than wait for an emergency and then deny health care to millions, or do it expensively at the cost of all taxpayers in emergency rooms!
So it turns out that the Founding Fathers were indeed “socialists” in the sense they mandated that people in the merchant marine had to take responsibility for their own health care and contribute to the cost through mandated taxes!
The author wishes to acknowledge that this tidbit of information came to him through the discovery on line of this revelation by his son, David Feinman, a true “chip off the old block” in so many ways! 🙂 Thanks, Dave! 🙂