Health insurance was conceived as a mechanism to deliver health care "more in accordance with human need rather than on the basis of ability to pay"During post—Civil War years, newly freed African American slaves formed mutual aid societies to share the costs of illness and burial. Immigrant worker groups formed their own mutual aid societies to protect themselves from potential financial devastation due to unexpected health care expenses. Through pooled funds, healthy workers would subsidize those who became sick or injured. In some manufacturing and service workers unions, remnants of this type of community-based sickness pool can still be found.