| "It is absolutely beyond the pale for the healthcare access of someone and their family to be linked to their employment. It perverts the freedom of movement between jobs that people have a fundamental right to." It's not really linked to employment. Employers pay for it, yes, but anyone can go on the open market and get their own insurance. I'm a consultant and have been paying for my own insurance for me and my family for a decade. In addition to this, there's something called cobra, that allows you to pay for health insurance for awhile after you leave an employer. Unless the person in this article went over a year between jobs and never even tried to buy his own insurance, his lack of coverage is an exaggeration. "I'm sure there are an assortment of remedies, but the fact that access to healthcare _EVER_ factors in to your career is manifestly wrong." It really doesn't. The majority of companies provide healthcare for their employees. I've even worked for a company of 10 people and had fantastic healthcare. "Have you ever decided _not_ to take a risk starting your own small business because of loss of healthcare coverage?" No. You can pay for your own insurance, which includes doctor prescription, checkups, and you won't go bankrupt in an emergency (or paying for the insurance). "Have you ever had a family crisis and through it been forced to continue working in order to keep healthcare coverage?" Even if you have 0 coverage, a hospital will be forced to take you. If you get bills, you can negotiate with the hospital and you can get your bill down 90%. There are some nonprofits that will actually pay your bills for you if you really have no money. Most of these articles are FUD to push everyone to go to Universal healthcare. Sure our system has problems, but a government takeover will not solve the issues. Insurance was never meant to be used for everything. We need to get rid of the insurance companies and allow hospitals to actually charge patients the true value of things (which would immediately bring the costs of most things down). Surgeries and procedures that happen often would be brought down due to competition and the ones that don't happen that often could be covered under some sort of insurance. Platic surgery and Lasik eye surgery are good examples of this in action. A decade ago, they were both very expensive. Competition has brought the costs down considerably. My parents both got Lasik surgery without insurance and paid under $1000. 10 years ago, it was $10,000. I also really never got the 'not being able to start a business' mentality. Sure you have more risk, but it will take you much longer to actually have a running business if you have an increased amount of taxes due to universal healthcare. In most European countries, you need to involve the unions after a certain amount of employees. This combined with large amounts of taxes impedes growth. I would be interested to see how many larger companies in Europe actually started and grew there or grew large in another country and then opened up an office/location there. I'm guessing more of the latter than the former. |