This is a great post. My only disagreement is with the insinuation that the lack of universal healthcare in the US is there to intentionally trap people in unfulfilling jobs. While I agree that it sometimes has this affect, I think universal healthcare may actually make people even more dependent on the system the author is writing against, all while decreasing the quality of the health care we receive.
Great article though.
--Written from my budget apartment, while working on stuff I love
I've lived in both situations (currently in the US) and I would say universal healthcare is absolutely essential for a first world nation to have. Tying it to your employment is most certainly a form of keeping people dependent.
The biggest concern I have is that there are many people in the US like you who simply cannot see this. It's a disgrace that a country as large and dominant as the US cannot take care of it's own. I honestly believe that the healthcare situation adds a strong undercurrent of stress to everyone's lives here in the US. It detracts from personal flexibility and makes things like extended travel or entrepreneurship even more risky.
Unless you've had the fortune of living with universal healthcare, it's difficult to understand the feeling of security knowing that no matter what happens to your health, you will be looked after without needing to go bankrupt in the process.
From my experience living and working in multiple countries, some with and some without universal healthcare - I'm shocked that a person's health can be tied to their employment. It's a disgrace, and it absolutely, 100% has the impact of trapping people to their job.
After 7 years in a country where health care is tied to employer, my brother moved to the other side of the world to a country with universal healthcare and within 3 days said "the biggest cultural difference I've noticed is how employees are treated... so much better here"
Without further information, your second paragraph sounds like a straightforward correlation/causation fallacy. Can you add context which might dispel that impression?
Sure. The more we talk about it, the more he notices the differences when an employer has to actually compete for employees, not the other way around.
People in that country get the same level of care if they have been employed full time for 10 years, or have never had a job, or whatever. Because of this, people are free to move between jobs, or even outright quit if they want, because they know their health will not suffer.
Nobody in that country discusses health or healthcare like it's an issue, because it's something they take for granted. It's a given.
With that in mind, imagine how differently the conversation goes when someone says something like "I'm thinking about working for a non-profit" or "I'm thinking about taking 2 years off to explore my creative talents", etc.
I know a woman who moved from the US to the Netherlands in part because she has severe asthma. There are periods when she cannot work for a month or three, and in the US she'd have trouble keeping her job during those, and then she'd have trouble paying for necessary healthcare. In the Netherlands paying for treatment is a non-issue.
The US economy lost a smart woman with good skills both as a programmer and a project manager because of this. Her contribution to the economy easily outweighs the cost of her health care...
For a young, single, healthy person, independent health insurance is not an issue.
Once you have a whole family living under your umbrella and multiple medical history trails 10 years long to explain on your application, it can easily become your largest recurring expense.
Barring personal catastrophe and unless they fall into the consumption pattern described in the article, most continually-employed professionals are entirely capable of reaching a cash-only, everything's paid-for state by the age of 50, sooner if they don't go the marriage/family route.
Health insurance isn't one of those things to ever check off though. Your age increases your risk premium and all rates inflate every year so it costs more and more until you reach the Medicare age, and even then, it still doesn't go away.
If the US matched the rest of the civilized world with respect to healthcare, you can bet we'd see professional people more mobile and retiring sooner.
"I think universal healthcare may actually make people even more dependent on the system the author is writing against"
Please explain why you think that is, and why you think that universal healthcare is of lower quality. It sounds very much like an assumption fuelled by the sort of people (and "propaganda") the article speaks of.
From a global perspective, I'd argue that the relationship between employees and employers should be kept nice and simple, with employees being paid only cold hard cash, and using that cash to buy things like health care, nice lunches and equity.
Complicating the relationship starts to reduce the mobility of labour. In turn that introduces inefficiency and detracts from national productivity. Granted that reducing labour mobility may have local, short-term benefits for a single company, but averaged out it is a negative.
Great article though.
--Written from my budget apartment, while working on stuff I love