[vidarh]

The father of universal healthcare by way of a state supported insurance system was Bismarck, who was far right by modern standards, and argued for it based on Christian morality, not socialism, though he was "accused" of being a "state socialist" over it, and embraced that label because it fit well with his struggle to limit the growing appeal of the actual socialists.

In European history, a lot of welfare reforms subsequently came down to Christian democrats (typically centre right to right by European standards) or cooperation between them and socialists and social democrats.

This just makes the US situation weirder - by the time socialists and trade unions gained much real power in Europe, universal healthcare was mostly already uncontroversial and settled or close to it as a result of the support of Christian groups on the right, with a couple of exceptions such as the UK, where the right wing rhetoric leading up to the NHS got pretty extreme.

[znkr]

Bismarck was afraid of workers unionizing and transformed a working healthcare system owned by workers into a state owned one. That move significantly reduced the utility of worker unions, which was the goal behind it.

[vidarh]

A working healthcare system is dramatically overstating it, and his system - like the current German one - had relatively speaking low state involvement. The German system remains one of the least state controlled universal healthcare systems to this day.

I do agree with you that a lot of his motivation was to counter the socialists and unions though.

Though I'll note that already before Bismarck, the socialists largely didn't oppose state involvement - Marx famously lambasted the Gotha program of what became the SPD in part for their willingness to trust the state.