Improving the Health of Employees and Communities: Business Leaders’ Accountability in Next Stage Capitalism

What does Next Stage Capitalism offer to those contemplating the future of health and healthcare in the U.S.? This essay traces the origins of health insurance schemes created at the end of World War II largely as a result of government efforts to lessen inflation. In the early 1970s, corporate leaders began to offer their senior executives health and wellbeing perks, a practice that eventually worked its way down to front line workers. The corporate wellness movement emerged in the early 1980s and has now been incorporated into a larger corporate social responsibility effort that include ESG measures of success. But do these health and wellbeing initiatives pay off in gains expected from Wall Street investors? Milton Friedman would have argued that investments in employee health and wellbeing are wasteful of time and money. The resources belong to company shareholders instead. This essay argues that investments in human capital do pay off, at an individual as well as societal level. What does Next Stage Capitalism demand of American business and government? A greater emphasis on prevention and health promotion rather than treatment.