This was in the days before pre-existing conditions were forced to be covered. My disabled spouse had already maxed out one Blue Cross policy in his 20’s (back where that was a possibility). The ONLY way I could get insurance for him was to work for the company. Or maybe I should have just watched him suffer and die?
I felt dirty a lot of the time but if I hadn’t done that he would have died a couple decades before he actually did because at the time no one would cover him. No one. And we weren’t making enough money to pay out-of-pocket.
Call it an “excuse” if you will - I couldn’t think of another way to keep him out of pain and alive.
50 years ago - “Medicare for all” was proposed as far back as the Nixon administration (then Watergate derailed a lot of stuff that might have otherwise happened).