It's the weeds, I'm John Quinhill.

It's almost upon us the most wonderful time of the year.

Open enrollment.

That means pretty soon a lot of us will be shopping for our health care coverage,

attempting to find the best plan, trying to remember what exactly a deductible is again,

and deciding if that flexible spending account is worth it.

And most Americans will be doing that through their jobs.

In 2022, almost 55% of Americans got their insurance through an employer,

meaning that your employment status and where you work are major factors in the kind of

coverage you get. And that puts a lot of pressure on your employment.

What if you have doctors that don't take the insurance offered by a prospective employer?

What happens if you lose your job?

It's a process a lot of us accept as a fact of life because it's been this way for decades.

And today on the weeds, we're exploring why.

It's an interesting story that involves a wartime adjustment, fear of inflation,

and everyone's favorite, tax policy.

We're hopping in the trustee weeds time machine to look at the days before insurance existed,

how it became so tied to our jobs, and when the single-payer option made its way back into

the American imagination. For this particular journey back in time, I knew just who to call.

My name is Dylan Scott, and I am a senior correspondent covering health care at Vox.

Dylan says it's important to understand what was happening in the early 1900s,

when health care, as we know it, was starting to take shape.

...