Healthcare and Jobs? Really!?!
Universal healthcare is a hotly debated topic in the United States right now. It seems like it’s talked about every day on one of the 24-hour news channels. In my opinion, neither side does a good job talking about universal healthcare. I know that I couldn’t either it’s a nuanced topic that is very difficult to address accurately. However, I rarely hear about some of the things I feel are insanely important when you discuss whether or not the United States should adopt universal healthcare. One of which is how healthcare is intrinsically tied to your employer. How is it fair to the employee that the job always has an advantage over them that the employee can never really get back.
It baffles me that here, United States, you need a job to be able to get healthcare affordably. Now, this has been a norm in the United States forever but it’s something that should change. This is an unfair advantage that employers have over their employees. Imagine you’re at a job you don’t really like, and they don’t respect you or your abilities. Then you get a job offer from your dream company for your dream job, Congrats, but there’s a 30 day wait period for you to get healthcare from them, it could even be 90 days maybe longer. If you’re healthy and don’t have a family that might not be a huge deal but what if you are the sole provider for a child there’s a lot of stuff that can happen in that waiting period that would worry many parents that’s not even including if anyone in your family has pre-existing conditions that cause them to need medicine. Think about it someone with diabetes can’t go that time without insulin and also insulin is one of the most up charged medicines there is. Just because they have this disease, they might think I can’t wait that time and have to decline the offer and stick with the company they hate. You can interchange an infinite amount of variables in this story, and it has happened. People have declined higher-paying jobs because of the time without insurance they can’t go without. This is a benefit that we can’t take back from employers because of how our insurance works in America. If we changed how insurance works in the United States, we could be able to give the power back to the people, and employers couldn’t leverage it against their employees.
We should look at the GM strike as a prime example of what employers are capable of when they don’t get what they want. During these strikes, GM had a meeting and wanted to know a way to get the strike to end and they decided that they have the right to take away healthcare from all the workers on strike and not just the workers but also their families. If it wasn’t for their union stepping up to cover the cost of healthcare for them, they could’ve been out of luck. Most of these people couldn’t go from what they were paying then to the astronomical rates that you pay when you don’t have employer-provided healthcare. This is just another example of why we can’t continue to let employers leverage this over the people they employ. If you want to strike for better pay or for a better workspace you might not just be sacrificing the pay but also the health of yourself and your family.
