We have talked about various alternatives to Truman as FDR's running mate in 1944, but I don't think we have discussed Henry J. Kaiser enough. As a famous businessmen, pro-New Deal yet nominally Republican, Kaiser would seem an ideal choice, except for one thing. According to Judge Rosenman (on being asked to comment on James Byrnes' assertion in *All in One Lifetime* that Rosenman had advocated Kaiser as FDR's running mate):
"Long before the President made up his mind that the political temper was such that he would be burdened by a Wallace candidacy for Vice President, he began to talk generally about who there was that could do some of these things that he had been doing. I said, 'You know, we've always been considering politicians: Senator this and Governor that. If we could find a good, liberal, businessman in the Democratic Party, maybe such as Willkie was, that it might be a freshening innovation to bring him in as Vice President.' We began to talk about possibilities. I had gotten to know Henry Kaiser very well. He was then busy turning out ships at an unprecedented rate, and his labor relations were fine, and I suggested him. The President had met him on several occasions, and of course, had read about him.
"He said, 'Well, I think that's an interesting idea. Why don't you try to find out something about him.'
"I did two things: I called up one of his right-hand men and told him, 'I don't want you to talk about this, but I want to get a collection of every speech that Henry Kaiser has made in the last ten years, and let me see them.'
"He said, 'That will take a little time.'
"I told him why I wanted it and he said, 'Well, then, I guess it will take less time.'
"I also got the FBI to look at him. The FBI turned in a favorable report--completely all right. I got the speeches. It was rather a large volume of stuff. I started to read them. All of them were fine except one. In that one he came out for a large sales tax to finance the war and what was coming on after the war. The President had always been against sales tax, as I had been. And so far as I was concerned that eliminated him, but I went to the President and told him all these things and said, 'He made a speech about two years ago urging sales tax.'
"He said, 'I guess that's the end of Henry.'
"So Byrnes is correct, and I did recommend Henry Kaiser for consideration. The President must have told him about it. I did not know that Byrnes knew. It was one of those top secrets that's top secret for everybody but the President. I never read *All in One Lifetime.*"
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/rosenmn.htm
So let's take as our POD that Kaiser never makes that pro-sales tax speech. (We'll assume that's the real reason. Robert G. Nixon, a White Housr correspondent at the time, later said that Rosenman had given him an alternate explanation, namely that FDR had said 'Henry Kaiser, I'd like to have him, he's a fine man and very capable. But I need him too badly building liberty ships for the war."
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/nixon1.htm But perhaps that was just a cover story to explain the rejection of Kaiser without criticizing him.) President Kaiser no doubt takes a great interest in health care; in OTL he was a pioneer of the HMO (which was considered a progressive idea at the time) and in 1948 "established the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, (also known as Kaiser Family Foundation), a U.S.-based, non-profit, private operating foundation focusing on the major health care issues facing the nation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_J._Kaiser Another question of course is whether he would push for a national sales tax (even if he had been lucky enough never to have previously advocated it publicly). Maybe he also presses for statehood for Alaska and Hawaii (in both of which he took a considerable interest). And of course it's possible that postwar conversion might have been handled better than under Truman.
BTW, see
http://www.jailhurwitz.com/media/kaiser_done/24_media.htm for an argument that Kaiser's pro-labor image is only partially deserved. However, the anti-labor part of his record seems to have been associated only with his earlier years. His shift may have been gradual and "politically motivated" but as the article concedes "By the end of his life, the shift was complete."