We’d be much stronger economically if that wasn’t true. And it would be easier for younger people to move up without the fossils waiting until age 65 for Medicare.
Give them what they voted for – good and hard.
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/22/nx-s1-5902333/health-insurance-jobs-gallup
intercst
Is this 1 in 4 Americans? or 1 in 4 Americans who have jobs?
This is completely believable.
I might have a second spinal fusion surgery (first was 15 years ago). I had open heart 3 years ago. All of these were surprise surgeries, none related to “life style and diet” or other “bad choices” I might have made. (leaking heart valves are not caused by Big Macs). Do people realize how expensive these are?
I’m 59, and the number one reason I am still working is health insurance. I’m not the only one I know like this. A much younger person I know won’t consider starting his own company or working for a small company for health insurance reasons as well.
Health insurance is the number one reason I am not bankrupt.
Yeah but its made liars out of people in dc for it.
I think we know the preexisting conditions exclusion applies to Medicare. Not to employers group insurance.
If a family member has a continuing medical issue, it’s very likely acceptance of a job offer depends on if company health insurance will cover it. I’m aware of people who look into special needs schooling before accepting a move.
Yes, health insurance is part of it. Yes, universal health insurance would be a plus that avoids this problem. But it is still expensive and no one has come up with the funding. Or learn to trim healthcare inflation.
lol
My company pays $22K for my family plan, I have a $6K deductible. Seems like that would go a long way towards funding universal healthcare.
Electricity prices can be regulated, I’m sure health costs cold be regulated as well. It’s amazing all these other countries can figure it out, but not the exceptional USA.
I think we know that some don’t know that most employer group insurance policies cannot exclude coverage for preexisting conditions.
I just checked private insurance options through blue cross blue shield (Florida) to find annual premia in the range of $24-49K! Although the costs did not include deductible spend and other transactions, out of Pocket, regardless of plan looked to be $36K - and higher.
That’s a pretty strong incentive to keep working, even if the job only pays $35K a year.
Sure. But is this something that’s specific to healthcare?
I mean, there’s lots of reasons that people work in a specific job, of course. But a lot of people work in the job they work at because they need the money to pay for things. They stay in that job because they need to pay for their house. Or because they need to pay for their food. Or because they need to pay for their health care.
Does that change very much if you switched to a different system of paying for healthcare? If we financed health care the way most European countries do - taxes that fund a public system - do you end up with much of a different outcome? People will still need to work to meet their material needs.
Suppose someone’s at a job they hate because they need it to have access to health care. You change the system so that their health care is sourced from the government. But to pay for that, the government takes X% of their pre-system money in order to pay for the health care. Now they’re not staying at the job they hate because they have to provide for their health care, but they’re probably going to still have to stay at the job they hate because they have to pay for the taxes that now pay for their health care.
Certainly at the margins there will be a non-trivial number of people who would leave the workforce altogether but don’t because the cost of health insurance is higher outside the labor force than within it. But I suspect it’s not 1 in 4. For a very large proportion of the folks who are reporting this, if we were in a public health system they would still be staying in a job they don’t like in order to pay for something - it would just be something other than health care.
Sounds like a forced labor policy.
I found 18% of US gdp.
Will that work?
Simply put, USA healthcare has evolved into a distorted monster. Of course people get sick for idiot reasons (poor diet, alcohol and drug mal-use, lack of simple basic exercise) when there is no significant health education and guidance (with serious professional coaching and even kibitizing) as is constantly provided by Public Health services as a key part of HealthCare.
More and more USA healthcare keeps a populace in poor health living to work, and dying slowly in misery…..
Yes. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), all job-based health plans must cover treatments for pre-existing conditions. Employers cannot deny you coverage, exclude treatments, or charge you higher premiums simply because of a pre-existing health problem you had before your enrollment date. [1, 2]
If you’re dealing with a specific situation, I can help you:Understand your rights if your current claim was deniedFigure out the next steps if you are between jobs and exploring options like COBRA or ACA Marketplace plansLet me know what you need help with next!
AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses
[1] Pre-existing conditions | UnitedHealthcare
[2] https://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-aca/pre-existing-conditions/index.html
But what might be keeping them from switching jobs today is that the job they prefer doesn’t provide health insurance. A great many small (as in really small - say less than 10 employees) don’t provide health insurance. Switching to self-employment also costs them their health insurance.
A public option, or full-blown government run health care, would allow those folks to switch away from a job they don’t like.
--Peter
Sure - but that doesn’t mean that a government system is going to give them the option to switch.
Remember, that system needs to be paid for, with a non-trivial amount of taxes. We make the switch, and now there’s a public system that’s available for everyone - and everyone needs to pay for it through taxes, including (in all likelihood) serious VAT or sales taxes. You don’t have to pay for your health care any more, but your cost of living goes up for nearly everything else. Advocates hope that the latter is a little less than the former, but it’s not free.
Before the switch, our hero starts at a job that’s more remunerative than the one they want to go to (this one has a health care plan that worth enough that it’s not worth switching). After the switch, they don’t have that obstacle - but they need to earn more money (pre-tax) than they did before. And the job they’re at is likely still more remunerative than the one they want to go to.
A fair number of those people are still going to be trapped at the job they don’t like - because although what’s trapping them takes the form of health care, the core reason they’re “trapped” there is really that they job they’re at has higher overall compensation than the one they want and they can’t afford to take a pay cut to go work for the more desirable job with less pay. There will people at the margins and with specific situations and there’s all kinds of nuance here (especially for public sector union jobs). It would certainly change some people’s positions.
But for a huge swatch of that “1 in 4 Americans,” switching health care systems isn’t likely to free them from staying in a job they dislike. The job they dislike is a better paying job (inclusive of bennies) than the job they want to go to, and while they might imagine that making health care public might eliminate that problem, in reality it’s still likely to remain an issue for most people. Plenty of folks trapped in jobs they hate in other countries, even though they all have public health systems…
The taxes for some type of government health care are just a rejuggling of payments. The money that previously went to health insurance premiums and copayments (and direct payments for the un- or self- insured) would now go to the government.
Yes, that’s a tax increase, but it’s offset by a decrease in health care payments by employers and individuals.
Of course, that’s looking at big totals of payments. At a more granular level, some will pay more and some less than before. Any system will need to take that into account. I have my own thoughts on that topic, but that’s for a different topic.
—Peter
I mean, that’s not necessarily true - and I don’t think it would be - but it doesn’t really affect the point in this thread. Namely, for most of the people in this situation, switching health care systems isn’t likely to enable them to make a job switch that they can’t make today. Once you’ve imposed all the taxes that are necessary to fund the new health care system, the gulf in remuneration that kept that person from switching jobs in the first place will still mostly be there. It will just be different things that they won’t be able to afford which keep them stuck in the job which is higher-paying, but unliked.
The question is not finding money to pay for it.
We are already dedicating 18% of gdp, a very substantial amount relative to reasonable benchmark countries.
The question is: what health care value are we getting for that 18%?
I get there are many entrenched interests grabbing some of that 18% (including individuals) and that the actual path to improvement is not simple operationally or politically.
But it’s absurd to look at that 18% and not think “we really need to get more value for that 18% or keep the value that we get and try to reduce the cost to 17%, 16%, etc.”
This is one topic in which there is pretty broad agreement. Talk to anyone receiving or delivering health care.
There’s even agreement among folks here who otherwise disagree on many things.
No one except every other developed country on the planet.
That is a question. But it’s not really a question that relates to the issue raised in the OP.
We can change how that 18% gets collected and put into the health care system…but that’s not going to suddenly allow all these Americans who are staying in a job they don’t like to now have the freedom to change jobs. Most will still be stuck. It will just be a different thing (or collection of things) that they can’t afford to change jobs over.
Let’s say you switch to a VAT (like many European countries), which you set to raise the same amount that everyone’s currently paying for health care premia. Let’s say it’s 18%. Now everything’s 18% more expensive, but companies that were previously paying health care premiums can give that premium to their employees as higher wages.
Our worker at UnhappyWorkCo previoiusly couldn’t afford to switch to PleasantJob because whatever delta in salary (if any) between the two jobs wasn’t enough to cover paying for her own health insurance. After the health care regime is changed? That condition still largely exists. The salary delta between the two jobs is still unlikely to be enough to let her switch, because she wouldn’t be able to afford her general expenses (which are now 18% higher) if she was at PleasantJob. All that’s changed is that instead of a single big visible thing she couldn’t afford (a healthcare policy), she would have a general cost-of-living problem for all the stuff she buys if she were to switch jobs.
It doesn’t really matter too much how you structure the money going into the national health care program. The above is the VAT. Payroll taxes (like the rest of Europe) have the same effect: UnhappyWorkCo just pays the taxes using the money they would have spent on premiums and take-home pay doesn’t change, but at PleasantJob paying those payroll taxes reduces take-home substantially. Whatever the difference in total compensation (including benefits) existed before the switch to national health care is still going to largely be there.
There will be marginal cases, to be sure - but for the most part, switching health care systems isn’t going to unlock job movement for most of the “1 in 4” discussed above.