Health Regulation Quotes
Alinsky was one of the first of the modern politicians who realized the growing control over peoples’ lives that the health care was assuming. Getting decent health care at an affordable price was getting more and more difficult for the working class unless provided by an employer, and the poor were already at the mercy of whatever system there was in the area as they could go nowhere else.
This is a classic example of the interaction between legislation, health and science. In 1931 the State of Michigan passed a law to protect the public health. It was written to ensure that there would not be unhealthy or dangerous substances added to cigarettes or the tobacco in cigarettes. No “ingredient deleterious to health” could be put in a cigarette. However, although it was not generally known at the time, there are few substances known to man that are as “deleterious to health” as the tobacco itself. The law protected public health, but the enforcement did not concentrate on the right ingredients.
1st Earl of Beaconsfield. In the United States, President Theodore Roosevelt shocked the major business interests when he proposed regulating food and other government quality assurance of the private marketplace. Many Americans saw this as an overdue reform. One of the reasons was that Prime Minister Disraeli had advocated government regulation a quarter of a century earlier with statements like this quotation.
